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<html><body><div>Rahm Emanuel is U.S. ambassador to Japan.The international trade system is based on a single, simple premise: If you are part of the system, you will abide by the system's rules.When China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001, the world believed that bringing it into the system would be a win for Beijing by helping to lift its people out of poverty and a win for global economic integration and unity due to the country's market potential and population.There was only one problem: China did not agree to adhere to the same principles and rules. It entered the WTO and then proceeded to ignore the rules that upheld the system.Instead of embracing market reforms, China turned its back on them, following only those WTO provisions that served its own economic interests and ignoring others.Worse than Beijing's practice of doling out state subsidies to give its companies an unfair advantage and erecting market barriers to hobble foreign competitors -- both strategies prohibited by the WTO -- has been the proliferation of coercive economic measures against trade partners.Indeed, this has been China's most pernicious and persistent tool of economic subversion. Beijing has moved to weaponize international trade and deploy an arsenal of illegitimate tactics to do so: rampant intellectual property theft, corporate espionage to steal trade secrets and cyberattacks on corporate systems.Moreover, China uses market leverage and distorts trade rules to coerce other countries to change their political stance. In short, economic coercion has become political warfare by other means.In 2010, China cut off exports of critical rare earth minerals to Japan, hitting Japanese industry and consumers, over a dispute involving the Senkaku Islands.After a 2012 confrontation between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea, China quarantined fruit exports from the Philippines and sent vessels to "protect" Chinese fishermen and block Philippine fishing boats.In 2016, after Seoul decided to deploy a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system to protect itself from North Korean launches, Beijing orchestrated boycotts by Chinese consumers and tourists, punishing Seoul for acting in its self-defense.Australia and Lithuania have also been victims. China slapped import restrictions on a range of Australian goods -- coal, barley, beef, copper and wheat -- over Canberra's calls for an independent inquiry into the origin of COVID-19.China banned all imports from, and exports to, Lithuania after Vilnius allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in 2021.Sometimes China's economic coercion is overt and obvious. Other times it is covert and conniving.It also engages in softer coercion, as it did with the U.S. National Basketball Association, which succumbed to Chinese pressure, and with apparel companies that spoke up for human rights and against forced labor in the northwest region of Xinjiang.Regardless of the method, the pattern is clear: Beijing exerts economic pressure to achieve its political goals and bend nations to its political will. It makes examples of individual countries to intimidate other nations and limit their political independence.If the world does not organize against economic coercion, Beijing will continue to prey on other countries and their economies, large or small, developed or developing, near or far.The world's current response is lacking. A unified plan of action is absent. Continuing on the present course would be a recipe for the continuation of China's coercion. But what can the world do to do deter Chinese economic coercion and respond when deterrence fails?First, nations can insulate themselves from Chinese economic pressure through collective groupings, whether formal ones like the Group of Seven or the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or more informal arrangements with partners. 
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 Joe Biden listens to other leaders at the IPEF virtual launch event in Tokyo in May 2022: Nations can insulate themselves from Chinese economic pressure through collective groupings.



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Japan has placed economic coercion at the top of the agenda for this year's upcoming G-7 leaders' summit.Second, law-abiding nations have our own tools of economic cooperation which can be used to shore up supply chain resilience.We must offer victims real relief in real time from China's coercive trade actions, including export credit lines and expedited licensing. Look no farther than what the EU is considering: the adoption of an anti-coercion instrument that focuses on deterrence and allows for retaliatory policies. Or look at what the U.S. did to aid Europe when Russia weaponized its energy and food resources.Only the collective resolve of nations, united in common cause by support for the rule of law and the view that economic engagement should produce mutual benefit, can deter China and protect other nations from becoming victims of its coercion.Global economic leaders, like the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, the U.K. and the members of the EU, must act collectively to deter and defend each other and other law-abiding nations.None of us has the luxury of staying on the sidelines. Unified collective action is the best offense and defense to respond to China's intimidation and coercion.
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An anti-coercion coalition can check China's economic weaponization

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