The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday released a 2,576-word report on US long-arm jurisdiction, a typical US practice that severely harms the international political and economic order and the international rule of law.
Experts said that revealing the truth and facts on the US’ failure in governance is important as it helps the international community to get a clearer understanding of US hegemony, its exports of uncertainties, and disruptions to global order.
Entitled The US Willful Practice of Long-arm Jurisdiction and its Perils, the report was unveiled on Friday afternoon by the ministry, and consists of three major parts – an overview of US long-arm jurisdiction, exercise and expansion of US long-arm jurisdiction, and the perils of US long-arm jurisdiction.
The US has a longstanding practice of exerting frequent long-arm jurisdiction over other countries, including both its allies and countries with which it has hostile or strained relations, the report said. In recent years, the practice has kept expanding in scope, with US “arms” stretching longer and longer. Examining the cases of US abuse of long-arm jurisdiction, this report lays bare the severe harm it has done to the international political and economic order and the international rule of law.
The US is the only sanctions superpower in the world, the report said. According to the Treasury 2021 Sanctions Review, by fiscal year 2021, the number of active US sanctions designations had increased to more than 9,400.
The report also cited the examples on the US imposing unilateral sanctions on foreign countries such as Iran and Libya. Also, to maintain its economic and technological supremacy, the US abuses its public power to interfere with normal international commercial exchanges and competition. Under the pretext of safeguarding national security and fighting against human rights violations, it has adopted a package of measures including the Entity List and economic sanctions to restrict foreign enterprises from obtaining raw materials, items and technologies vital to their survival and development, according to the report.
The timing of this report’s release coincides with US threats to sanction more Chinese companies amid the Ukraine crisis, Huo Zhengxin, a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times on Friday.
The US has been advancing a deal with the Netherlands and Japan to curb China’s access to some advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
The report was released at a time when the US has been expanding the scope of its long-arm jurisdiction to exert disproportionate and unwarranted influence over extraterritorial persons or entities, enforcing US domestic laws on extraterritorial non-US persons or entities, and wantonly penalizing or threatening foreign companies by exploiting their reliance on dollar-denominated businesses, the US market or US technologies, observers said.
The report also mentioned the case of the imprisonment of a senior manager from the French company Alstom in 2013, which reminds the Chinese public of the case of Meng Wanzhou, a Huawei senior executive, who returned to China in 2021 after being illegally detained for nearly three years in Canada at the US’ bidding.
China’s victory in the Meng incident could help slow the process by which the US uses its legal system to wage economic war against specific companies and inspire more countries to stand up against the long-arm jurisdiction of the US, former Alstom executive Frederic Pierucci, who was also a victim in the Alstom case, told the Global Times in a previous interview.
The US holds a notorious record not only in its domestic governance but also in international politics, constantly exporting uncertainties to the world. “Any responsible country should expose those US actions of blatantly interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and disrupting global order,” Diao Daming, an associate professor at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times on Friday.
When the US, despite being so discredited, is reportedly planning to hold the second Summit for Democracy in March, this exposure will help the international community better understand its true face, Diao said.
