MOFCOM

MOFCOM (Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China) is the cabinet ministry responsible for trade policy, foreign investment regulation, and international commerce. Founded in 2003 from the merger of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MFTEC) and the State Economic and Trade Commission (SETC), it sits under the State Council and is headed by Minister Wang Wentao. It oversees export licensing, anti-dumping investigations, trade remedy proceedings, and China's Unreliable Entity List.

Its dual role as both a trade facilitation ministry and an economic statecraft instrument has grown sharply since the 2018 US-China trade war. The marquee counter-sanctions instrument in its arsenal is the 2021 Blocking Rules (Order No. 1), which gives MOFCOM authority to issue mandatory non-compliance orders directing Chinese citizens and firms not to honour foreign unilateral sanctions. A companion tool, the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (AFSL) of 2021, allows MOFCOM to place foreign nationals on a countermeasures list subject to asset freezes and Visa bans. Together these instruments position MOFCOM as Beijing's primary legal firewall against US and EU secondary-sanctions pressure.

MOFCOM sat at the centre of a three-way institutional split that U#95 made fully visible. On 2 May 2026, MOFCOM issued Announcement No. 21 under the 2021 Blocking Rules — the first live activation of the statute in five years — directing five mainland Chinese refineries (Hengli Petrochemical, Shandong Shouguang Luqing, Shandong Jincheng, Hebei Xinhai, Shandong Shengxing) not to recognise or comply with OFAC's Iran secondary-sanctions orders . The announcement also created a private right of action allowing Chinese entities to sue Western counterparties in Chinese courts for losses incurred through compliance with US Iran sanctions.

Simultaneously, China's NFRA (National Financial Regulatory Administration) was operating on a contradictory track: Bloomberg confirmed on 7 May that the NFRA had privately told ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China, CCB, and Bank of China to halt new yuan loans to the same five refineries that MOFCOM had just ordered to defy OFAC . The MOFCOM-NFRA split is the clearest evidence that Beijing's enforcement posture is bifurcated: MOFCOM signals defiance for diplomatic and domestic consumption while the banking regulator quietly enforces dollar-clearing risk. MOFCOM had also lodged a formal protest via the US Embassy channel condemning the Hengli designation as illegal under international law.

On 11 May, OFAC's 'Economic Fury' round designated four Hong Kong-registered shells linked to Iran's IRGC oil-logistics network . Beijing's Blocking Rules extend only to mainland China: MOFCOM has no legal jurisdiction over Hong Kong SAR firms, which remain exposed to OFAC enforcement. OFAC targeted HK entities precisely because the MOFCOM cover does not reach them. The three actors now operate on three different legal geographies and three different policy timelines — MOFCOM (mainland defiance), NFRA (quiet bank wind-down), OFAC (SAR pressure) — with the Trump-Xi summit on 14-15 May as the Deadline forcing resolution.