In December 2025, the European Union quietly terminated its WTO case against China over the trade blockade of Lithuania, citing the resumption of trade. It was an odd victory announcement. Lithuania's own government pointed out that Beijing still restricts several categories of Lithuanian exports and had recently sanctioned two Lithuanian banks that do not even operate in China. The complaint had sat in Geneva for four years and resolved nothing. Trade resumed for a different reason entirely: Lithuania refused to fold, and its friends made the coercion expensive.

That distinction, between complaining and imposing costs, is the single most important lesson in twenty-five years of Chinese economic coercion.

It is a lesson Taiwan, the machine's most frequent target, has still not fully absorbed.

The machine itself is remarkably consistent. A government offends Beijing politically and within weeks, its exports encounter sudden hygiene concerns, customs delays, or unexplained licensing problems. The problems are always deniable and never officially linked to the dispute whilst the targets are chosen with great care. They are politically loud but economically marginal sectors, farmers and fishermen rather than anything China actually needs. Contrition is rewarded with restored access, completing the cycle and teaching the next target that apology pays.

The ledger of results of course tells a different story. Norway apologized effectively for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo, signing a 2016 normalization statement pledging respect for China's "core interests," and got its salmon sales back. Mongolia folded within days after a Dalai Lama visit brought its border trucks to a halt. South Korea, punished over the THAAD missile defense deployment in 2017, offered the "Three Noes" and mortgaged a piece of its security policy for the return of tour groups and retail access.

Then there is the other column. Australia absorbed the full 2020 campaign, roughly USD 14 billion in tariffs and bans on wine, barley, coal, and lobster, imposed after Canberra called for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. Australia never retracted the call despite pressures from industry leaders. It diversified its markets, won at the WTO on barley, and waited. By 2024 Beijing had dismantled its own measures, and roughly three quarters of Australian barley exports flowed straight back to China once restrictions lifted. 

Lithuania was blockaded over the opening of a Representative Office in Vilnius that included the word “Taiwan”. It kept the office, kept its policy, and expanded its economy as Taiwan, the United States, and eventually the EU opened alternative markets and credit lines.

The pattern is not subtle because coercion succeeds against concentrated, easily substituted exports and against governments that stand alone. It fails against economies that diversify, allies that coordinate, and governments that decline to bow. The machine's record against resolute targets is not merely poor; it is a catalogue of expensive Chinese retreats.

Events of 2025 raised the stakes substantially when the Netherlands intervened at chipmaker Nexperia over evidence that its Chinese parent was transferring technology. Beijing responded by blocking exports of China-packaged chips, briefly threatening global automotive production. The rare earth licensing regime introduced in April 2025 was never actually suspended despite announcements of a settlement; heavy rare earth exports still run at roughly half their pre-restriction levels, and the current truce expires in November 2026. The machine has been upgraded from punishing exporters to weaponizing chokepoints and every Taiwanese board with mainland exposure should read that calendar carefully.

Taiwan's own record as a repeat target is, paradoxically, one of quiet resilience. The 2021 pineapple ban was absorbed within a season, largely by Japanese consumers. Grouper, sand, and the piecemeal suspension of ECFA tariff concessions followed, each absorbed in turn. Taiwan's economy has proven more resilient to Chinese pressure than almost any other target's, but what Taiwan has not done is respond. Each measure is met with condemnation, regret, and calls for dialogue, a series of adjectives. The ledger shows only verbs deter.

Three actions follow directly from the evidence.

First, put the chokepoint defense in statute. Taiwan holds the single greatest point of leverage any coercion target has ever possessed, and its export control regime for critical technology should be criteria-based, procedural, and law, not a press release. Beijing spent 2025 demonstrating exactly how a chokepoint is operationalized through licensing, extraterritorial reach, and technician controls. Taiwan should build the mirror image now, so that invoking it in a crisis looks like administration rather than escalation.

Second, charter a coalition of the already-coerced. Lithuania survived because its problem was made collectively expensive. That should be permanent architecture: a standing coercion-response fund and pre-committed market-access measures among Taiwan, Lithuania, Australia, Japan, and the Czech Republic, activating automatically when any member is targeted. The EU's Anti-Coercion Instrument gathers dust because it requires twenty-seven governments to accept confrontation simultaneously but a club of veterans has no such veto problem.

Third, the time has come to retire the adjectives. Official responses to the next agricultural ban or ECFA suspension should announce initiated reviews and reciprocal measures, not deep regret. The audience is not Beijing, which reads only capabilities. It is the hundred governments and ten thousand boardrooms deciding whether Taiwan is a country that defends its interests or one that describes them.

For business, the Australian precedent is the benchmark: map single-market exposure now and prepare substitute buyers before the ban arrives, whilst treating diversification as insurance.

The full ledger supports one conclusion. The machine breaks against targets that impose costs and feeds on targets that issue statements. Norway apologized and got its salmon sales back. Lithuania refused penance and got its trade back, its office intact, and a strategic reputation out of all proportion to its size. Taiwan has spent decades as the machine's most patient test subject and holds leverage no other nation has ever held. The complaint has been filed, in triplicate, for twenty-five years. The complaint department is closed and now it is time for some verbs in Taiwan's sentences.

(This piece reflects the author's opinion, and does not represent the opinion of CommonWealth Magazine.)

CommonWealth Magazine welcomes op-ed submissions. Please send your article proposals to [email protected]

About the author:

Clive Hazell is a Kaohsiung-based educator and writer who has lived in Taiwan for twenty years, following earlier teaching careers in Australia and Japan. He has written for the Taipei Times and publishes Taiwan Dispatches, a newsletter on cross-strait affairs and Chinese economic statecraft.

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