Chinese Research Team Publishes 63-Sector Framework for Export Restrictions Targeting US and Allies — Institutional Blueprint for China's Economic Coercion Toolkit

A Chinese government-affiliated research team published a comprehensive framework on June 2 identifying 63 technology sectors where China has achieved sufficient market dominance to justify imposing export restrictions on the United States and allied nations. The framework is structured as a direct institutional mirror of the US Entity List and BIS export control architecture: where the US restricts what China can buy, the 63-sector framework maps what China could restrict selling to the West. Key sectors flagged include: rare earth processing and magnets (China controls ~80%+ of global supply), photovoltaic solar cells (~90% of global manufacturing), battery materials and cells (CATL 37% global share + BYD), drone components and systems (~70% global market), and specific AI model architectures developed using Chinese IP. The framework also covers advanced materials including gallium, germanium, graphite, and cobalt processing; telecommunications equipment (Huawei 5G); and autonomous vehicle sensor systems. For each sector, the framework documents China's global market share, the estimated cost to Western defense and clean energy industries of supply disruption, and proposed restriction mechanisms. The framework is advisory rather than binding — it represents researchers' recommendations to policymakers rather than enacted controls — but its simultaneous publication with China's June 2 trade secret regulations and the preceding June 1 outbound investment regime signals systematic construction of China's economic leverage architecture. SCMP framed the publication as China's preparation of a 'comprehensive sanctions response capability' — the institutional infrastructure for economic coercion that mirrors, rather than merely reacts to, US sanctions tools. Context: China has already enacted partial versions of sector-specific controls — gallium and germanium export controls (2023), rare earth export controls (2025), anti-dumping probe on US analog chips, anti-discrimination probe on semiconductor restrictions — but this is the first comprehensive cross-sector framework establishing the full scope of Beijing's potential counter-sanctions toolkit. The 63-sector framework, combined with June 1's outbound investment regulation and June 2's trade secret law, represents the conceptual completion of China's bilateral tech war regulatory architecture: outbound restriction capability now mirrors US inbound restriction capability across financial, technological, personnel, and commodity dimensions.