The Biden administration is reportedly considering imposing sanctions against China to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping's government from invading Taiwan, according to a Reuters report. Taipei, too, is chasing the European Union to do the same, the report further stated.
What Happened: Amid growing fears of a Chinese invasion as military tensions escalate in the Taiwan Strait, the island nation is lobbying its allies to impose sanctions on China, which claims sovereignty over it.
The report citing sources familiar with the discussions said the deliberations in Washington and the E.U. were both at an early stage, adding that the governments were mulling bringing in sanctions beyond measures that have already been taken before. However, the source did not provide exact details of what the government was considering.
Why It's Important: "The potential imposition of sanctions on China is a far more complex exercise than sanctions on Russia, given U.S. and allies' extensive entanglement with the Chinese economy," Nazak Nikakhtar, a former senior U.S. Commerce Department official, told the publication.
This came after the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said it had discussed China’s recent war games and the “great challenges” that it poses to Taiwan and the region with the U.S., Europe, and other like-minded partners, without disclosing more details.
The tension between China and Taiwan grew massively after the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei, which, Beijing alleged, had “seriously undermined sovereignty, territorial integrity.”
Xi, who is also set to secure an unprecedented third five-year leadership term at the Communist Party congress, has also promised to bring democratically-governed island nations under Beijing’s control and has not ruled out the use of force.
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