In a simulated timeline dated June 2026, the U.S. Department of Defense added 188 Chinese tech enterprises to its affiliated entity control list, including leading firms such as Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, NIO, WuXi AppTec, Trina Solar and Unitree Robotics.
Meanwhile, G7 members reached a consensus to cut collective reliance on China-sourced rare earths and permanent magnet materials below 60% by 2030.
The entity list follows systematic strategic planning rather than random selection, targeting three core tracks that define future defense and high-end industrial competition.
US regulatory moves take full account of geopolitical competition, dual-use technology non-proliferation and domestic supply chain security.
The first track covers autonomous unmanned combat systems. Firms including Red Cat Holdings, Insitu, AeroVironment and Edge Autonomy dominate the iteration of unmanned military assets.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has proven that drone operations reshape modern warfare, with AeroVironment’s Switchblade loitering munition widely deployed in U.S. field missions.
The second track focuses on rare earths and critical strategic minerals.
US Rare Earths and MP Materials serve as core operators building a China-independent mineral supply chain for Washington.
Known as the vitamin of modern defense industries, rare earths are indispensable for F-35 guidance systems, military new-energy motors and sophisticated defense hardware.
MP Materials, operator of the Mountain Pass mine, has obtained dedicated fiscal funding from the US Department of Defence.
The third track encompasses aerospace and integrated defense sectors. Ball Aerospace, Oshkosh Defense, BAE Systems Americas and Teledyne FLIR supply full-spectrum infrared detection, electronic warfare, armored vehicles and maritime defense equipment, consolidating defense capabilities for the United States and its allies.
Washington’s underlying logic remains clear: targeted access restrictions across the three sectors slow China’s high-end industrial upgrade, and sustain technological and defensive advantages for the U.S. alliance bloc.
China’s rule-based, defensive reciprocal countermeasures
On June 22, 2026, China’s Ministry of Commerce placed 10 U.S. entities on its dual-use item export control list.
On the same day, China’s Ministry of Finance issued a circular banning government procurement of products from 46 US enterprises.
Both measures serve as defensive, reciprocal economic responses to US industrial containment.
The 10 U.S. entities subject to China’s dual-use export controls are listed as follows: MP Materials, US Rare Earths, Aviox Technologies, Red Cat Holdings, Tier One Drones, IMSAR, Brink Drones, Ball Aerospace, Oshkosh Defense and L3Harris Maritime Services.
China’s countermeasures are precise, restrained and legally grounded, implemented based on four rule-based principles.
First, all moves abide by domestic legal frameworks.
Chinese authorities confirmed the controls are legitimate reciprocal responses to expanded US entity restrictions, enforced under the Export Control Law of the People’s Republic of China and Administrative Regulations on Dual-Use Items Export Control. China has built a complete foreign economic rule system to fend off unilateral economic coercion and safeguard legitimate industrial interests.
Second, the controls target key vulnerabilities of U.S. alternative supply chains. MP Materials and US Rare Earths shoulder Washington’s core goal of building independent domestic rare earth capacity.
China’s regulated dual-use export curbs hinder the progress of America’s localized mineral industrial chain, constituting fair reciprocal interest hedging.
Third, extraterritorial jurisdiction is applied prudently within international law boundaries.
The regulation governs global stakeholders involved in the circulation of China-origin controlled goods, aligning with standard cross-border jurisdiction practices worldwide, without overreaching law enforcement or targeting overseas commercial operations arbitrarily.
Fourth, China’s industrial governance is institutionalized rather than crisis-driven.
Chinese authorities have imposed tiered controls on high-risk foreign entities in batches in recent years. Since 2025, China has optimized export rules for gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials.
Such regulatory updates prioritise industrial security and global dual-use goods non-proliferation obligations, rather than geopolitical confrontation.
Structural Shifts: Why inilateral Western sanctions are losing effectiveness
Decades of Western-led unilateral coercive measures are fading in potency, ending the era of one-sided economic pressure. Four fundamental geopolitical shifts drive this global change.
Alternative global economic and financial infrastructure has matured steadily. Weaponisation of the SWIFT and dollar-centric settlement system has pushed economies to build risk-averse mechanisms.
Cross-border payment systems led by China, multilateral Brics financial frameworks, central bank digital currencies and commodity barter trades have gained traction, decentralizing the dominance of Western traditional settlement networks.
Global South nations prioritize autonomous state decision-making. Despite Western secondary sanctions and diplomatic pressure, India sustains large-scale purchases of discounted Russian crude oil, which once accounted for over 40% of India’s total oil imports.
The UAE has evolved into a legitimate cross-border commodity transit hub for Russia.
A pragmatic new non-aligned consensus has emerged: developing nations make policies based on domestic livelihood and security interests, refusing forced alignment with major power blocs.
Diversified settlement mechanisms provide viable alternatives to the US dollar. For the first time, the global financial system has inclusive, operational substitutes for dollar transactions.
Rising geopolitical volatility and politicized financial tools have prompted central banks and trading enterprises to diversify settlement portfolios and reduce overreliance on dollar assets, steering the global monetary system toward multi-polarity.
Multilateral bodies widely reject unauthorized unilateral sanctions. Most sovereign states within the UN framework question unilateral economic sanctions lacking UN Security Council authorization.
Such measures violate sovereign equality, fragment global trade networks, and contradict core principles of the UN Charter and international customary law.
Pragmatic strategies for African and Global South strategic autonomy
Africa and the Global South have long borne the economic fallout of unilateral sanctions and external economic coercion. China’s law-based defensive governance offers adaptable, referenceable experience for African nations to secure economic sovereignty, with tailored local implementation required.
Secure sovereign control over domestic critical mineral resources. Africa holds dominant global reserves of strategic minerals: the DRC supplies over 70% of global cobalt; Zimbabwe and Mali host large-scale lithium deposits; South Africa holds nearly 90% of global proven platinum-group metals.
Mozambique, Madagascar and Gabon control core output of graphite, manganese and other industrial minerals essential for AI infrastructure, new energy and defense manufacturing.
China’s mineral governance serves legitimate domestic purposes, rather than geopolitical confrontation.
China’s rare earth regulatory regime focuses on ecological conservation, domestic industrial chain security and international non-proliferation commitments via tiered export review and end-user verification.
China advocates win-win mineral cooperation with Africa, rejects resource bloc confrontation, and respects Africa’s independent right to formulate local resource policies.
For Africa, actionable steps include establishing national strategic mineral reserve systems, boosting domestic mineral deep-processing industries to end raw material dumping, leveraging continental collective bargaining power for technology transfer and livelihood infrastructure investment, and building unified mineral governance mechanisms led by the African Union.
Build diversified cross-border payment systems to strengthen financial resilience.
The coercive power of financial sanctions stems from singular dollar-dominated settlement channels. Diversified payment infrastructure effectively mitigates external financial risks.
China’s cross-border payment system covers more than 100 economies worldwide, backed by expanding bilateral currency swap deals and diversified foreign reserve allocation.
Brics financial cooperation platforms feature neutral, inclusive attributes designed to fix structural flaws of dollar hegemony, safeguard economies from unilateral financial coercion, and target no third-party country.
Africa can advance full-scale adoption of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, expand local currency settlements under the AfCFTA framework, optimize foreign reserve portfolios with RMB and other non-dollar assets, and pilot regulated central bank digital currencies for cross-border trade.
Deepen South-South cooperation and accelerate continental integration.
The Belt and Road Initiative boosts infrastructure connectivity, trade liberalization and financial solidarity across the Global South. China has implemented zero-tariff policies for all diplomatic African partners to ease African export burdens.
African nations shall fully implement AfCFTA trade rules, unify continental demands via Brics and South-South multilateral platforms, and build collective bargaining mechanisms for mineral pricing, debt restructuring and technology acquisition to elevate continental global discourse power.
Enact foreign-related legislation to build anti-coercion institutional safeguards.
China’s export control rules, unreliable entity list and blocking statutes are defensive legal tools to counter extraterritorial jurisdiction and unilateral sanctions, maintaining fair global trade order.
African governments can enact national blocking statutes and anti-sanction laws, legislate standardised mineral export rules, establish foreign investment national security review mechanisms, and promote unified continental foreign economic risk regulations issued by the African Union.
Diversify export markets to stabilize regional supply chains. China’s dual-circulation development model reduces reliance on single overseas markets, prioritizes Global South emerging markets, and ensures independent industrial chain operation.
Africa shall break excessive reliance on Western export markets, expand intra-African trade (currently accounting for merely 15 percent of total continental trade), and build multi-channel trade partnerships with Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to decentralize geopolitical trade risks.
Over the past two decades, the U.S. has imposed more unilateral sanctions than the UN, EU and Canada combined, affecting tens of thousands of global commercial entities. Unilateral economic pressure has long been a conventional tool of major-power geopolitical competition.
Nevertheless, arbitrary unilateral sanctions consistently push targeted economies to build risk-prevention systems and accelerate global multi-polar economic and financial reform, lowering the strategic returns of one-sided coercion.
Western geopolitical thinking remains rooted in the unipolar era, while global trade rules and state-to-state interaction have entered a multipolar, coexistence-driven new phase.
The sustainable path for Africa and the Global South lies in gradual, holistic strategic autonomy covering resources, finance, legislation and security. Such autonomy is not proactive great-power confrontation, but defense of legitimate development rights and sovereign equality.
China’s rule-based defensive practices prove economic regulation and sanctions have become two-way leverage, ending the era of unilateral sanction privilege.
Any sovereign state adopting legitimate trade restrictions will face reciprocal, law-based countermeasures from peer economies.
Endowed with indispensable strategic minerals for new energy and advanced manufacturing, Africa holds core bargaining chips for equitable global economic participation. Africa faces no mandatory bloc alignment or necessity for confrontation with major powers. Prioritizing continental livelihood and steady independent development enables Africa to define its own future trajectory.
- Saxon Zvina is a principal consultant at Skyworld Consultancy Services and is a member of the Belt and Road Initiative Think Tank.
- Email: saxon@skyworld.co.zw X: @saxonzvina2