The Extraterritorial Effect of the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law on the People’s Republic of China

The plurality of international law has led to a cross-cutting relationship between national laws, and legal pluralism favors the legal regulation of persons rather than territory. The transcendence of territorial doctrine in legislation breaks with the framework of the territorialized order established by the Westphalian system that limits jurisdiction to the territory. In response to the growth of Western foreign intervention, China put forward the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction against foreign discriminatory restrictive measures to protect the legitimate interests of States, organizations, and individuals in China. Under the convergence of public and private law, the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law combines the attributes of public and private law. It uses a combination of various clauses to establish extraterritoriality. The basis of jurisdiction has evolved from the strict territoriality principle to the flexible effects doctrine and protective principle. Thus its extraterritoriality has expanded through subject matter jurisdiction, operational mechanism, and the target of the anti-foreign sanctions. The extraterritoriality of the Anti-foreign Sanctions Law will be challenged at both the international and domestic levels: the limits to the exercise of national legislative jurisdiction within the framework of international law, the competition between the extraterritorial prescriptive jurisdiction of the enacting State and the adjudicative jurisdiction of the territorial State, and the balance between national sovereignty and commercial interests.