Expressions like “supply chain” and “chokepoints” have now reached a wide, almost spasmodic diffusion in international debate. With every crisis, we learn that we always depend on a limited number of suppliers for a component or material, and there are always costs to pay for a diversification that is anything but simple and often postponed.
The paradigm shift from an era of more fluid interdependence, in which there were still winners and losers, to interdependence used as a weapon or vulnerability is no longer even a subject of discussion. It is the reality of our time, which will continue to accompany us in the near future, in a continuous game between market interdependence and national security needs.
One of the books that described this paradigm shift, Edward Fishman’s “Chokepoints,” recalls a very significant episode from 2018, first taken up by a 2022 report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University.
In 2018, due to the increasingly offensive strategy of the United States towards Chinese penetration in telecommunications (which culminates with the ZTE and Huawei cases, which I analyzed in “The Powers of Political Capitalism” in 2020), Beijing began to organize its response in a more structured way. Part of this was also a series of thirty-five articles published by a Chinese government newspaper, which unusually transparently listed the choke points, that is, the technological bottlenecks where Beijing critically depended on foreign imports, mostly from the United States, Japan, and European countries.
The CSET report, also drawing on that same analysis, highlighted the limits of Chinese capabilities in various fields, including obviously the best-known cases, such as ASML machinery, but also others less immediate (for example, niches occupied by the American Teledyne ODI and the Japanese Canon Tokki). There is also mention of gas turbines, referring to GE, Mitsubishi, Siemens, and our Ansaldo.
The Chinese articles, among other things, indicated that despite large injections of state capital many Chinese companies preferred to buy foreign components, due to doubts about the quality of domestic suppliers. What the series of articles has long suggested, to observers not distracted by economic intelligence dynamics, is China’s willingness to protect itself by investing in knowledge of the weaknesses and “holes” in its own supply chain.
For this reason, in addition to numerous concerted actions with companies, of which, due to the nature of the Chinese system, we can only have incomplete knowledge, there is also a transparent legislative construction activity by Beijing, of a toolkit to use antitrust for the protection of the supply chain or an arsenal of export controls modeled on the American one.
It is within this activity, of crucial importance for understanding the current dynamics of economic security, that we can place the document published on April 7, 2026, by the Chinese State Council, with the Provisions on the Security of Industrial and Supply Chains (Decree 834), approved on March 13 and signed by Premier Li Qiang on March 31.
Decree 834, among other things, requires State Council departments to draw up and dynamically update lists of key sectors to ensure the continuous functioning of production activities. A risk monitoring and early warning system is established, with which Chinese apparatuses want to constantly “know in order to decide,” as well as an emergency framework for the urgent use of resources and reserves in case of threats to national security. Companies and research institutes are also encouraged to improve their risk prevention systems, safeguarding critical technologies and data.
Numerous points of Decree 834 regulate interactions with foreign countries. Article 13, for example, prohibits organizations and individuals from conducting investigations or information-gathering activities related to supply chains in China in violation of state provisions. Since the text does not precisely define such limits, audit operations for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) parameters, inspections to verify the absence of forced labor required by U.S. laws, or value chain mapping imposed by European due diligence directives now risk being classified as illegal investigations, with possible retaliatory measures.
Article 14 also mentions retaliation against states and international organizations that impose discriminatory restrictions or embargoes against China, allowing the application of export bans or the use of tariffs. Article 15 grants Chinese authorities the power to investigate and sanction foreign commercial entities that disrupt normal transactions or adopt discriminatory measures in such a way as to cause substantial harm to the security of Chinese chains.
According to Article 16, organizations and individuals on Chinese territory must strictly adhere to the measures and countermeasures decided by the government based on the previous articles. This may lead to potential conflicts for managers and branches of American and European companies who will be legally obliged by Beijing to ignore the sanctions of their country of origin in order to comply with the needs of the Chinese supply chain, in a market on which their companies will want to continue operating. Offenders may be excluded from public procurement, lose the right to send data abroad, and face travel restrictions.
Decree 834, within the history of our time of economic security and political capitalism, also reminds us – if there was any need – how “armed” the truce between China and the United States is, in view of Trump’s trip in May.
