Glossary

Key Terms {-}

Asset Freeze: A form of financial sanction that prevents a targeted individual, entity, or government from accessing or transferring assets held in the sanctioning country's financial system.

ASML (Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography): Dutch company with monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines essential for manufacturing advanced semiconductors.

Autocracy: A system of government in which power is concentrated in the hands of a single leader or small elite group, with limited political pluralism or democratic accountability.

Blackout: Temporary disruption of service, particularly in telecommunications or internet connectivity, often used as a tool of information control.

Choke Point: A geographic location or technological node through which a disproportionate share of trade, data, or resources must pass, creating potential leverage for control or disruption.

Coercion: The practice of persuading or forcing someone to do something through threats, pressure, or force.

Comprehensive Sanctions: Broad economic measures that severely restrict or prohibit most trade, investment, and financial transactions with a target country.

Critical Infrastructure: Systems and assets essential for the functioning of a society and economy, including energy, telecommunications, transportation, and financial systems.

Critical Minerals: Raw materials essential for key technologies and industries that face supply chain vulnerabilities due to geographic concentration or geopolitical risk.

De-dollarization: The process of reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar in international trade, finance, and foreign exchange reserves.

Dual-Use Technology: Goods, software, or technology that can be used for both civilian and military applications.

Economic Coercion: The use of economic tools and interdependencies to compel, deter, or punish specific policy changes in target states.

Economic Interdependence: The mutual dependence between countries arising from trade, investment, technology transfer, and financial flows.

Economic Statecraft: The use of economic tools to achieve foreign policy objectives, including positive inducements and negative coercion.

Entity List: A U.S. government list of foreign parties prohibited from receiving certain U.S.-origin items without a license, primarily for national security or foreign policy reasons.

EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) Lithography: Advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology essential for producing chips at 7nm and below.

Export Controls: Government restrictions on the export of specific goods, technologies, or services, typically for national security, foreign policy, or nonproliferation reasons.

Extraterritorial Sanctions: Sanctions that apply not only to entities under the sanctioning country's jurisdiction but also to foreign entities engaging in specified activities.

Financial Sanctions: Measures that target financial transactions, assets, or access to financial systems to pressure targeted entities or countries.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): Investment made by a firm or individual in one country into business interests located in another country.

Geoeconomics: The use of economic instruments to produce geopolitical outcomes, or the ways in which geopolitics shapes economic flows and structures.

Great Power Competition: Strategic rivalry between major powers (primarily the United States and China) across military, economic, technological, and ideological dimensions.

Industrial Policy: Government intervention in the economy to promote specific industries or technologies deemed strategically important.

Investment Screening: Government review of foreign investments to assess potential national security, critical infrastructure, or strategic technology risks.

Leverage: The ability to influence another actor's behavior through control of resources, access, or relationships that the target values.

Multilateral Sanctions: Coordinated economic sanctions implemented by multiple countries or international organizations.

National Security: The protection of a nation's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and core interests from external and internal threats.

Proliferation: The spread of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological) or their delivery systems to additional countries or non-state actors.

Rare Earth Elements (REEs): A group of 17 metallic elements essential for high-tech products including electronics, magnets, batteries, and defense systems.

Regime Change: Foreign policy objective seeking to remove or replace a target country's political leadership or governing system.

Resilience: The ability of a system, supply chain, or economy to withstand and recover from shocks, disruptions, or coercive pressure.

Sanctions: Economic or political penalties applied by one or more countries against a targeted country, organization, or individual.

Secondary Sanctions: Sanctions that penalize third parties (foreign entities) for conducting business with a primary sanctions target.

Sectoral Sanctions: Targeted economic restrictions on specific sectors of a target country's economy, such as finance, energy, or defense.

Self-Sufficiency: A country's ability to meet its essential needs through domestic production without relying on foreign supply.

Semiconductor: Electronic component made from materials that conduct electricity under certain conditions, essential for modern electronics and computing.

Smart Sanctions: Targeted sanctions designed to affect specific individuals, entities, or economic sectors while minimizing humanitarian impact on civilian populations.

Strategic Autonomy: A country or region's ability to make independent strategic choices without being constrained by dependence on other powers.

Supply Chain: The network of organizations, people, activities, information, and resources involved in creating and delivering a product or service.

SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication): Belgium-based cooperative providing secure financial messaging services for international banking transactions.

Targeted Sanctions: Economic measures focused on specific individuals, entities, or sectors rather than comprehensive sanctions affecting an entire economy.

Technology Transfer: The sharing or movement of technology, knowledge, or capabilities from one country, organization, or context to another.

Unilateral Sanctions: Economic sanctions imposed by a single country acting alone rather than as part of a multilateral coalition.

Value Chain: The full range of activities required to create a product or service, from initial conception through production to final consumers.

Weaponization: The use of economic interdependencies, institutions, or tools as instruments of coercion or geopolitical pressure.

Acronyms and Abbreviations {-}

AI: Artificial Intelligence

ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations

BIS: Bank for International Settlements

BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (economic cooperation group)

CFIUS: Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States

CHIPS Act: Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act (2022)

CIPS: Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (China's alternative to SWIFT)

CNY: Chinese Yuan (currency)

COCOM: Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (Cold War era)

COVID-19: Coronavirus Disease 2019

CPTPP: Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

CSIS: Center for Strategic and International Studies

DoD: U.S. Department of Defense

EAR: Export Administration Regulations (U.S.)

EC: European Commission

EU: European Union

EUV: Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography

EV: Electric Vehicle

FDI: Foreign Direct Investment

FIRRMA: Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (2018)

G7: Group of Seven (major advanced economies)

G20: Group of Twenty (major economies)

GDP: Gross Domestic Product

IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency

ICTS: Information and Communications Technology and Services

IMF: International Monetary Fund

IP: Intellectual Property

IRA: Inflation Reduction Act (2022)

ITAR: International Traffic in Arms Regulations

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NDAA: National Defense Authorization Act

NPT: Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NSS: National Security Strategy

OFAC: Office of Foreign Assets Control (U.S. Treasury)

OPEC: Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries

PRC: People's Republic of China

R&D: Research and Development

REE: Rare Earth Elements

RISC: Reduced Instruction Set Computing

SDN: Specially Designated Nationals (U.S. sanctions list)

SMIC: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (China)

SOE: State-Owned Enterprise

SWIFT: Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication

TPP: Trans-Pacific Partnership

TSMC: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

UN: United Nations

UNSC: United Nations Security Council

USD: United States Dollar

USMCA: United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement

VC: Venture Capital

WMD: Weapons of Mass Destruction

WTO: World Trade Organization

Chinese Terms {-}

百年国耻 (bǎinián guóchǐ): "Century of Humiliation" - Period of foreign intervention and defeat (1839-1949) central to Chinese national narrative.

不可靠实体清单 (bùkěkào shítǐ qīngdān): "Unreliable Entity List" - China's mechanism for restricting foreign entities that threaten Chinese interests.

东升西降 (dōng shēng xī jiàng): "The East is rising, the West is declining" - Phrase describing perceived shift in global power.

独立自主 (dúlì zìzhǔ): "Independence and self-reliance" - Principle of national sovereignty and self-sufficiency.

霸权主义 (bàquán zhǔyì): "Hegemony" or "hegemonism" - Pejorative term for U.S. dominance of international system.

科技自立自强 (kējì zìlì zìqiáng): "Technology self-reliance and self-strengthening" - Xi Jinping-era emphasis on indigenous innovation.

两弹一星 (liǎng dàn yī xīng): "Two bombs, one satellite" - Nuclear weapons and space program developed under self-reliance during Cold War.

韬光养晦 (tāo guāng yǎng huì): "Hide capabilities and bide time" - Deng Xiaoping's strategic principle (partially superseded under Xi).

中华民族伟大复兴 (Zhōnghuá mínzú wěidà fùxīng): "Great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" - Central goal of Chinese Communist Party.

双循环 (shuāng xúnhuán): "Dual circulation" - Economic strategy emphasizing domestic consumption alongside international trade.

互利共赢 (hùlì gòng yíng): "Mutual benefit and win-win" - Rhetoric emphasizing cooperative economics.

经济霸凌 (jīngjì bàlíng): "Economic bullying" or "economic coercion" - Chinese term for perceived U.S. economic pressure.

核心利益 (héxīn lìyì): "Core interests" - Non-negotiable national interests including sovereignty, territorial integrity, and regime security.

卡脖子 (kǎ bózi): "Chokehold" - Vulnerabilities where foreign technology restrictions can constrain Chinese development.

综合国力 (zōnghé guólì): "Comprehensive national power" - Holistic measure of national strength across economic, military, technological, and soft power dimensions.

自力更生 (zìlì gēngshēng): "Self-reliance" or "regeneration through one's own efforts" - Principle emphasizing indigenous capabilities.

Data and Measurement Terms {-}

Basis Points (bps): One hundredth of a percentage point (0.01%), used in finance to describe interest rates or yields.

Foreign Exchange Reserves: Assets held by a central bank in foreign currencies, used to back liabilities and influence monetary policy.

Market Share: Percentage of total sales in an industry or market captured by a particular company or country.

Nodes (semiconductor): Measurement of transistor size in nanometers (nm); smaller nodes represent more advanced technology.

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP): Exchange rate that equalizes the purchasing power of different currencies.

Success Rate: Percentage of economic coercion cases that achieve stated objectives, as measured by various scholarly studies.

Trade Balance: Difference between a country's exports and imports of goods and services.

Total Factor Productivity (TFP): Measure of economic efficiency showing output relative to inputs of labor and capital.

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Note: This glossary provides definitions as used in the context of economic coercion and geoeconomic competition. Some terms may have different meanings in other contexts.