The trade war launched by Donald Trump has monopolized, in recent months, the attention of the public debate, relegating to the background another actor with much more aggressive trade practices: China, as shown by Victor D. Cha, Ellen Kim and Andy Lim in the fascinating China’s Weaponization of Trade, Resistance Through Collective Resilience (Columbia University Press, untranslated). The trio of researchers relied on a set of unpublished data that illustrate how Beijing has continuously instrumentalized international trade for political purposes, between 1997 and 2025.
And yet, “China is much more dependent on its trading partners than we think,” says Victor D. Cha. This professor at Georgetown University sees an opportunity for countries attached to the international liberal order: to implement a strategy of “collective resilience” in order to deter Beijing from resorting to future predatory behaviors. Interview.
L’Express: In your book, you show how China uses trade for political purposes. You describe these methods as “economic coercion.” What do you mean by this?
Victor D. Cha: For most economists, trade exchanges between countries are perceived as mutually beneficial. It is a positive-sum game where everyone wins, but everyone becomes dependent on each other. Over the past fifty years, this interdependence was seen as a positive way to organize relations between states. But under the influence of China, we have entered an era where countries are increasingly inclined to instrumentalize trade for political purposes. This use of trade as a weapon differs from classic protectionism, which involves imposing tariffs to protect domestic producers, and which is an age-old practice regulated by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Economic coercion follows a different logic. It involves a country using tariffs, non-tariff barriers, or any other leverage to punish a partner and influence its political choices. The goal is not to protect its domestic market, but to influence the sovereign decisions of another state. And China particularly resorts to this kind of practice.
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