In the weeks before Xi Jinping's arrival in Washington, China's Foreign Ministry has made a series of statements about the rule of law. Read together, they are the most concise illustration available of how Beijing actually uses international law — not as a body of principle, but as an instrument picked up and set down as interest dictates.
Track One: Iran
On Tuesday, August 25, spokesman Lin Jian delivered a crisp defense of legal process. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent had just announced sweeping new sanctions on Iran's oil networks, sweeping in dozens of firms in China and Hong Kong accused of acting as intermediaries. Lin's response was immediate: Beijing "firmly opposes illegal unilateral sanctions without a basis in international law and without authorization from the United Nations Security Council." An economic war, he added, would only intensify contradictions and conflicts. The demand was clear: action against Chinese interests must have a basis in law and the authorization of the international community.
Track Two: The Steel Plant
On August 15, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. accused China of a "squid tactic — disinformation through avoidance." The subject was a Philippine law-enforcement operation at a steel plant in Misamis Oriental in May: 69 Chinese nationals arrested on court-issued search warrants over allegations involving substandard, radioactively tainted steel, the dumping of polluted water into rivers, and the release of toxic fumes. Teodoro charged that Chinese embassy officials had intervened in that lawful judicial process and threatened retaliation against ordinary Filipinos — that Beijing had warned the Philippines would "bear the brunt," which he called "an indiscriminate threat to retaliate against all Filipinos — extortion and blackmail beyond doubt." The DND described the Chinese Embassy's response as "a classic example of evasiveness and a badge of deception."
Set the two beside each other. In the Iran case, China insists that action against its interests must have a basis in law and the authorization of the international community. In the Philippine case, China stands accused of intervening in another country's domestic legal process — warrants, courts, law enforcement — and threatening an entire population to obstruct it. Legal legitimacy is indispensable when it shields Chinese interests and an inconvenience to be circumvented when it exposes them.
Track Three: The UN
In late July, the Philippines delivered a separate legal move at UN headquarters in New York: a formal submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, claiming an extended continental shelf in the West Philippine Sea. The submission — fifteen years in technical preparation — explicitly asked the CLCS to consider the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Award when evaluating the claim. Manila used the United Nations itself to embed the ruling China refuses to recognize into the international legal record on seabed rights. China's response: the submission was illegal, invalid, and an infringement on Chinese sovereignty. The ruling is null and void in the South China Sea but suddenly worth attacking when Manila tries to use it at the UN.
Track Four: The Water
In the same week as the CLCS submission, China's coast guard conducted three consecutive confrontations at two separate flashpoints. Chinese troops rammed a Philippine craft near the Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal, exchanging blows with batons and oars and injuring two Philippine service members. At Scarborough Shoal, coast guard vessels fired water cannons at Philippine fisheries boats on two consecutive days — one approach came within seven meters of a Philippine vessel in what Manila called a serious collision risk. Lin Jian's characterization: the coast guard's actions were "reasonable, lawful and beyond reproach." The Philippines should "immediately stop the infringement, provocation and hype."
Same spokesman. Legal process requires UN authorization in Iran. Ramming and water cannons are lawful in the South China Sea. Both conclusions resting on a single foundation: Chinese sovereignty.
The System
This is not hypocrisy in the conventional sense. A hypocrite believes in the principle and fails to live up to it. The Chinese Foreign Ministry does not believe in the principle. International law is not a framework of norms for Beijing — it is a toolbox. The instrument is picked up when it helps and set down when it doesn't. UN authorization is required for sanctions on Iran and irrelevant when China intervenes in Philippine courts. The 2016 ruling is null and void in the South China Sea and suddenly actionable when Manila tries to use it at the UN. Physical force on the water is "reasonable and lawful" and the Philippines filing legal claims is "infringement."
The double standard is not a flaw in the strategy. It is the strategy.
What makes this stretch of weeks unusually visible is the pace. Four tracks, all running simultaneously, all generating Foreign Ministry statements invoking the same vocabulary — sovereignty, law, legitimacy — in opposite directions. The operating system is running fast enough that the seams are showing.
Four weeks from now, Xi Jinping arrives in Washington. The words flying and the water cannons firing in recent weeks are not a prelude to the visit. They are a preview of the negotiating posture — the same operating system that will be in the room on September 25, picking up whichever legal or diplomatic instrument is useful in the moment and setting it down when it isn't, while the physical consolidation on the water continues regardless.
Understanding that operating system in advance is the prerequisite for reading what the visit actually produces, as opposed to what the joint statement claims it produced. The structural conditions Xi is carrying into that meeting are the subject of this Sunday's post.
The words are flying. They always are. The system is what matters.
J. Ken Rhodes writes through Rhodes Research (rhodesresearch.org) on Chinese economic statecraft, dollar architecture, and institutional dysfunction.