China’s economic ascent has been propelled not by a level playing field but by comprehensive state intervention that skews markets in favor of domestic champions. In April 2025, data from China’s General Administration of Customs revealed a 21 percent year-on-year drop in Chinese exports to the United States—an abrupt decline directly linked to U.S. tariffs soaring as high as 145 percent—while Beijing sought to reroute shipments to other global markets. The United States Trade Representative’s 2024 Report to Congress documents China’s chronic non-compliance with WTO obligations, highlighting opaque procurement rules, forced technology transfers, and hidden subsidies to state-owned enterprises that produce goods at below-cost prices to undercut foreign competitors. These tactics inflate China’s trade surplus at the expense of innovation abroad and provoke retaliatory measures that raise consumer prices worldwide, threatening the credibility of the rules-based trading system.
Economic coercion by the PRC extends beyond tariffs into outright theft of intellectual property and cyber espionage. An FBI executive summary estimates that counterfeit goods, pirated software, and trade-secret theft siphon between $225 billion and $600 billion from the U.S. economy annually, effectively levying a $4,000–$6,000 “tax” on every American household. Congressional investigators have traced more than sixty significant espionage incidents on U.S. soil since 2020, including intrusions into ports, research labs, and critical infrastructure, often orchestrated by entities linked to the Chinese state. Beyond undermining corporate competitiveness, these operations risk national security by transferring advanced semiconductor designs and biotech breakthroughs to China’s military-industrial complex, further entangling economic rivalry with geopolitical competition.
Domestically, the Chinese Communist Party wields a vast surveillance-censorship apparatus to crush dissent and control information flow. As documented by Human Rights Watch, the “Great Firewall” blocks over one thousand of the world’s top news, social media, and messaging platforms—including Reuters, the New York Times, and the BBC—forcing citizens onto meticulously monitored domestic. Automated AI filters and millions of state-employed censors scan online content for banned keywords, while legal provisions criminalize “spreading rumors” or “subverting state power,” giving authorities carte blanche to detain journalists, lawyers, and bloggers who challenge official narratives. This digital panopticon not only stifles free expression but also erodes public trust by creating an environment where any critique of the regime can trigger arrest or forced disappearance.
Nowhere are China’s abuses more egregious than in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has determined that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims constitutes crimes against humanity. Survivors describe forced labor, torture, political indoctrination, and coercive sterilization campaigns carried out under the guise of “vocational training centers,” starkly contradicting Beijing’s official narrative of benevolent reform. These abuses extend beyond Xinjiang: PRC-funded NGOs exert influence at U.N. forums to suppress criticism, and Chinese embassies monitor and intimidate dissidents abroad, effectively exporting the domestic repression apparatus onto the global stage.
During the 2020–2022 COVID-19 lockdowns, the regime’s prioritization of control over transparency had lethal consequences. Dr. Li Wenliang, one of the first to warn colleagues of a SARS-like outbreak in Wuhan, was reprimanded by police for “rumor mongering” and forced to sign a formal admonition, even as the virus spread unchecked. Another citizen journalist, Fang Bin, spent three years in prison for documenting conditions in lockdown-stricken Wuhan, illustrating how the silencing of whistle-blowers impeded global health responses and violated fundamental freedoms.
China’s environmental mismanagement compounds these human rights abuses with a catastrophic public health toll. The Global Burden of Disease Study attributes approximately 1.24 million deaths in China in 2017 to ambient air pollution alone—primarily from coal combustion and vehicle emissions—which leads to heart disease, stroke, and chronic respiratory illnesses. Rural areas bear the brunt through “cancer villages” like those in Guangdong Province, where long-term soil cadmium contamination from mining and smelting correlates with elevated leukemia and liver cancer rates among residents. Although Beijing has pledged carbon neutrality by 2060, it continues approving new coal-fired power plants, undermining both domestic health and global climate mitigation efforts.
On the geopolitical front, China wields its economic leverage through the Belt and Road Initiative in ways critics decry as “debt-trap diplomacy.” A Wilson Center analysis finds that 80 percent of Chinese policy bank loans to BRI partner countries are in nations now experiencing debt distress, from Sri Lanka to Zambia, granting Beijing freedom to extract political concessions or seize strategic assets when debts come due. In tandem, China’s coast guard and maritime militia routinely harass vessels from Vietnam, the Philippines, and other neighbors in the South China Sea, despite a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling invalidating Beijing’s “nine-dash line” claims—waters that carry over $5.3 trillion in annual trade. These actions flout international law and risk military escalation in one of the world’s most vital maritime corridors. China’s state-centric development model has undeniably lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and generated world-class infrastructure, yet these gains have been purchased through systemic abuses that transgress economic fairness, human dignity, and environmental stewardship. Confronting this multifaceted challenge demands sustained, coordinated international pressure: robust enforcement of WTO and UNCLOS rulings, targeted sanctions against rights violators, expanded support for independent media and civil society, and multilateral trade remedies to deter coercive industrial policies. Without resolute, unified action, China’s coercive model risks setting a dangerous precedent that undermines the rules-based order, endangers global health and stability, and jeopardizes the fundamental freedoms of billions under its sway.