UK’s scapegoating sanctions of Chinese entities ill-advised

If economics teaches anything, it is that policy inconsistency carries a price. The United Kingdom’s decision to impose a new round of sanctions on Chinese enterprises under what it calls “Russia-related” grounds is such a case in point.

The UK sanctions on Chinese entities over the Ukraine crisis are unilateral moves lacking basis in international law and without authorization from the United Nations. The sanctions weaken the very “rules-based system” and the “international law” the UK professes to defend. No wonder a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce expressed the country’s resolute opposition to the move.

The UK’s ridiculous “justification” for the move rests on China being an “enabler” of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. China implements dual-use materials export controls strictly in accordance with the law. The normal commercial exchanges between China and Russia should not be subject to the UK’s policy. On the contrary, the UK’s broad-brush penalties on Chinese entities are more like geopolitical signaling.

The deeper issue is Europe’s own security predicament. Multiple European studies have documented how decades of underinvestment have left Europe structurally dependent on the United States to build a defense umbrella. The Ukraine crisis did not create this imbalance; it exposed it.

Groundlessly scapegoating China diverts attention from a harder truth: Europe’s security architecture has long been subcontracted to Washington. As debates in Berlin, Paris and Brussels increasingly acknowledge, strategic autonomy cannot be built on slogans. It requires resources, unity and institutional reform. Sanctioning Chinese companies will not solve Europe’s credibility gap; it may, however, deepen economic fragmentation at a moment when growth is already fragile.

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated at the Munich Security Conference last month, the regional issues, including the Ukraine crisis, should be resolved through dialogue and consultation. Beijing is not a party to the conflict and has dispatched special envoys to facilitate talks. As Wang said, Europe should not be “on the menu” but “at the table”. The conflict is on European soil; a durable settlement requires European actions.

Europe has every right — and responsibility — to help establish a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture of its own. Yet, building such an architecture means stepping up to the plate to address root causes, not increasing the length of sanctions lists.

During his visit to China in January, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed to pursue a long-term and consistent comprehensive strategic partnership with China featuring mutual respect, high-level engagement and expanded cooperation in trade, investment, finance and climate. China remains one of UK’s largest trading partners, with bilateral trade in goods and services running into tens of billions of pounds annually — supporting jobs, investment and supply chains across the UK. Those are not abstract figures. They reflect complementarity.

Starmer’s visit highlighted to the UK the importance of tapping China’s stability and growth potential for the UK’s economic renewal.

Against that backdrop, the new sanctions look like a reverse swing, something Starmer vowed to avoid before his China trip. Consistency in foreign policy is a prerequisite for credibility. If the UK promises a “long-term and consistent” approach in January but reaches for unilateral arbitrary penalties in March, mutual trust will naturally erode. Investors notice. So do diplomats.

China, for its part, has signaled it will take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights of its enterprises. What would serve both is a sober reassessment in London: Are these sanctions grounded in solid evidence and international legitimacy? Or are they a symbolic gesture designed to demonstrate “toughness” while sidestepping Europe’s internal strategic debate?

The UK has historically taken pride in its pragmatic statecraft. In a turbulent world, pragmatism means distinguishing between real security threats and rhetorical constructs. And it means realizing that win-win cooperation — with differences properly managed through dialogue — can be a stabilizing force rather than a vulnerability.

The Starmer government should approach differences through consultation rather than confrontation. It should revoke the unilateral sanctions on Chinese entities. Above all, it should resist the temptation to peddle convenient fallacies about China’s “role” in the Ukraine crisis to obscure Europe’s own overdue reckoning with its security future. Strategic maturity demands nothing less.