BEIJING, April 28 -- When US President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping last October, ‌he rated the summit a "12 out of 10," and the White House said China would "effectively eliminate" rare earth export controls and cease retaliation against US firms.

Instead, even as it has refrained from overt criticism of Trump over the Iran war and signalled it wants a positive meeting between the two leaders, Beijing has quickly moved to expand its toolkit of economic pressure mechanisms aimed at Washington. Since last October, China has enacted laws ‌to punish foreign entities that shift supply chains away from China, tightened the rare earth licensing regime, banned foreign AI chips from state-funded data centres, barred ...