https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20740/china-sanctions
There is no mystery why China’s big banks have run from Russia: These behemoths — the four largest banks in the world ranked by assets are Chinese — know the U.S. can effectively impose a death sentence. The Secretary of the Treasury, for instance, can designate, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Chinese banks to be of “primary money laundering concern.” Designated banks can no longer clear dollar transactions through New York, where every dollar transaction clears.
Because the dollar reigns supreme in international transactions, Section 311 designations would put the Chinese state banks out of business most everywhere outside China and even reduce their business inside that country. The Treasury Department, to great effect, imposed Section 311 on Bank of Dandong, a small Chinese bank, in 2017 for participating in prohibited transactions with North Korea.
Moreover, Washington has other tools to hit Chinese banks. In 2012, Treasury also cut China’s Bank of Kunlun off from the U.S. financial system by invoking the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010.
“Transactions between China and Russia will increasingly go through underground channels.” The underground channels include cryptocurrency, generally banned in China. — “[T]he head of a trade body in a southeastern province that represents Chinese businesses with Russian interests” to Reuters.
China’s regime is playing Americans for fools. It is time for Washington to sanction all Chinese banks, all other Chinese financial institutions, and all Chinese corporates, treating them as one single organization.
Sanctions will work… if they are immediately applied against all Chinese entities to produce maximum shock.
There is no point in imposing sanctions that never have a chance of stopping offending behavior.
The larger Chinese banks, in response to stern U.S. warnings, have this year been exiting transactions involving Russia.
Are America’s sanctions efforts finally working?
No. Beijing is merely shifting transactions to smaller banks and non-banking channels. China, to help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, is employing a decades-old stratagem: the shell game.