Raising Cost of Supporting Taiwan: Beijing Aims to Create Chilling Effect
China Times Report, October 13, 2026
Beijing has conspicuously imposed sanctions on two officials from Belize and Paraguay, both diplomatic allies of Taiwan. Beyond continuing its legal warfare over the “One China” principle in the international arena, Beijing is, more importantly, attempting to shift responsibility for these countries’ diplomatic choices onto “individual politicians.” By doing so, it seeks to portray a small number of political figures as undermining their countries’ national interests, thereby creating internal divisions. For Beijing, the immediate objective may not necessarily be to persuade Taiwan’s diplomatic allies to sever ties with Taipei. As long as it can weaken pro-Taiwan voices among officials in these countries, achieving a short-term “salami-slicing” effect may be even more effective in creating a political chilling effect.
Beijing's decision to invoke its domestic Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law to sanction the two officials from Taiwan's diplomatic allies can essentially be seen as a continuation of its strategy of using “legal warfare” to pressure Taiwan. Simply put, through such sanctions, Beijing can continue to put its asserted “One-China Principle” into practice in the international arena by means of domestic legislation, transforming its diplomatic position into an enforceable basis for sanctions.
Although this form of legal pressure through “long-arm jurisdiction” may not necessarily be accepted by the sanctioned countries or individual political figures, Beijing's objective has never been to achieve immediate results. Rather, it seeks to accumulate precedents over time. As these cases accumulate, its legal warfare over the One-China Principle in the international arena could gradually produce what might be called a “precedent-setting effect.” Moreover, the fact that the latest sanctions target officials from Belize and Paraguay, neither of which maintains diplomatic relations with Beijing, effectively expands the cross-border deterrent reach of its legal warfare.
To be fair, using “legal warfare” to constrain Taiwan's diplomatic space is nothing new. Beijing has previously imposed sanctions on pro-Taiwan political figures from the United States and Japan. Behind its latest sanctions against two officials from Taiwan's diplomatic allies, Beijing's real calculation is likely to achieve the substantive goal of creating internal divisions by targeting individual political figures.
Judging from the announcement issued by mainland China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday morning, the targets were not the governments of Belize and Paraguay themselves. Instead, the announcement employed language emphasizing selfish motives, such as “individual anti-China politicians” and “personal interests.” This framing effectively attributes the future success or failure of the two countries' national interests to the irresponsible actions of a handful of politicians.
What Beijing seeks to accomplish is to create “differential treatment” within Taiwan's diplomatic allies, a strategy of selective pressure and political division. While officials who support Taiwan are made to bear the costs of their positions, the more crucial objective is to encourage politicians and business communities unaffected by the sanctions to envision opportunities for cooperation with mainland China. This could further intensify the isolation of and skepticism toward pro-Taiwan officials, prompting questions such as whether it is worth offending Beijing for Taiwan's sake.
Of course, the effectiveness of this carefully orchestrated approach ultimately depends on the attitudes of the governments of Belize and Paraguay. However, given the current international environment, in which Taiwan faces a much larger adversary, Beijing may not necessarily need to see an immediate severance of diplomatic relations. After all, if this strategy of “division” can reduce the voices of pro-Taiwan officials in Taiwan's diplomatic allies and slow the pace of cooperation with Taiwan, that may, to some extent, already be enough for Beijing to consider its objective accomplished. All that remains is to wait for the chilling effect to spread.
From: https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20261013000511-260118?chdtv