"Foreign Affairs" published an article "China's Legal Weapon" by Mark Jia, associate professor at Georgetown University Law School, on August 7, making an observation that Taiwan should be alert to: the law itself is also a state power. What really matters is not how many laws a country enacts, but whether it can make foreign governments, companies and individuals have to calculate the cost of violating these laws. For Taiwan, this means that cross-strait competition is extending from the military, diplomatic and economic space to the "rules space."
In the past, most discussions of mainland China's pressure on Taiwan focused on military aircraft, warships, diplomatic blockades and economic sanctions. However, the special thing about legal power is that it can change the behavior of Taiwanese people without actually entering Taiwan. In recent years, Beijing has successively established the "Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law", blocking foreign sanctions and foreign-related jurisdiction systems, showing that China has not only resisted the "long-arm jurisdiction" of the United States, but has begun to build its own legal long arm. The judicial opinions related to punishing "Taiwan independence" issued in 2024 also announced that criminal liability will be pursued for specific behaviors, and some cases can even be tried in absentia.
From the perspective of Taiwan's legal system, these norms cannot be directly implemented in Taiwan; what really needs to be vigilant is whether they have effects through a third place. Politicians, scholars, or business executives may begin to consider whether they can enter Hong Kong and Macau, whether they can go to countries with close judicial cooperation with China, whether their companies have assets in China, and whether their partners will keep their distance due to legal risks. As soon as these considerations begin to change behavior, Beijing's law has gained power.
This has also changed the shape of sovereignty competition. Traditional sovereignty emphasizes that "whoever controls the land makes the rules." However, power in the 21st century also means that even if one does not control the territory, the rules can still have effects outside the country through the market, finance, supply chain, and jurisdiction. The United States relies on the U.S. dollar, export controls and financial sanctions to build this power, and the EU creates the "Brussels effect" with its huge market. Now China is also combining market size, supply chain and national laws to establish its own radiation circle of rules.
Therefore, Taiwan cannot just ask "who controls Taiwan", but must also ask: Who has the ability to decide what Taiwanese people can do in the world? If Chinese law comes to influence the transactions of Taiwanese companies in third countries, the international activities of academics, and the choices of foreign companies in dealings with Taiwan, Beijing may gain partial control of the rules, if not territorial control.
Taiwan's response cannot just stop at "Chinese laws are invalid in Taiwan." The government should establish a legal firewall to prevent China's political judgments from having effects in third countries; it should also strengthen judicial coordination with countries with similar philosophies to prevent political prosecutions from being packaged as ordinary criminal cases; and at the same time help companies deal with compliance risks when laws and regulations conflict between China, the United States, Europe and Taiwan. Taiwan should also turn semiconductors, artificial intelligence, information security and supply chain governance into its own regulatory influence.
What Beijing is testing is not just the military boundaries of the strait, but also the regulatory boundaries of how far the law can go. What Taiwan needs to protect is not only its territorial waters, airspace and territory, but also its people’s freedom of movement in the international community from arbitrary jurisdiction by other countries. What is protected by military deterrence is the strait, and what is protected by legal deterrence is the regular boundary of sovereignty.
