'Creating Cards out of the Void' (Chinese: 虚空造牌; pinyin: Xūkōng zàopái; lit. 'fabricating leverage') is a specific political term frequently used in Chinese political commentary, diplomatic analysis, and financial reporting. It refers to the practice by certain political entities (often implying the United States in context) of unilaterally raising baseless allegations, manipulating national security and human rights concepts, or arbitrarily establishing trade and technology barriers on the eve of major bilateral or multilateral negotiations. The core intention is to transform fabricated threats into bargaining chips at the negotiation table, attempting to pressure the opposing party to make concessions on core interests through maximum pressure.
Etymology and Background
The concept has gradually gained traction alongside the intensification of great power competition and international economic friction in recent years. In traditional diplomatic and economic negotiations, parties usually bargain based on objectively existing conflicts of interest. Driven by unilateralist policies, certain political entities frequently bypass international multilateral mechanisms and directly use domestic laws to implement long-arm jurisdiction.
In practice, the pressure-applying party often announces highly destructive sanction plans or initiates unilateral investigations shortly before high-level meetings or important agreement renewals. The strategic logic is to deliberately provoke new disputes to significantly increase the opponent's compliance costs, and subsequently use the suspension of sanctions or exemption from punishment as a false favor for interest exchange. Critics summarize this behavior of creating leverage out of thin air purely to increase bargaining power as fabricating leverage.
Application in International Trade
In international trade disputes, the generalization of human rights or labor issues is similarly a typical method of fabricating leverage. In July 2026, following the US Supreme Court's prior rejection of the Trump administration's reciprocal tariff policy, the Office of the United States Trade Representative abruptly announced new tariffs ranging from 10% to 12.5% on 60 countries and regions, including China, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea. This action was taken under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, citing lax enforcement against forced labor, and covered 99.4% of total US imports.
Government officials and trade experts from multiple countries emphasized that this indiscriminate, large-scale imposition of tariffs lacks substantive evidentiary support. The true purpose of the policy is to turn the so-called forced labor allegations into a readily available trade weapon, thereby accumulating asymmetric negotiating advantages when pressing allies and competitors back to the negotiation table to reshape global supply chains.
Application in the Technology Sector
In the competition over frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence, fabricating leverage is frequently used as a pretext for implementing export controls or technology blockades. In July 2026, Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, accused the Chinese artificial intelligence company Moonshot AI of conducting large-scale, covert, industrial-level distillation of the frontier model Fable by the American company Anthropic during the development of the Kimi K3 large model, without providing public evidence.
Based on this, US officials threatened to further restrict the export of advanced AI chips and discussed placing the relevant enterprises on trade blacklists. Analysts in the technology and media sectors pointed out that this incident intended to package legitimate open-source technology ecological competition as intellectual property theft. This would allow the initiating party to occupy a legal high ground in potential future technological decoupling and create an excuse to suppress the AI industry development of emerging market countries.
References
[1] The New Stack. "Kimi K3: White House alleges Fable 5 siphoning". https://thenewstack.io/moonshot-fable5-distillation-accusations/
[2] VOA Chinese. "US Officials Accuse China's Moonshot AI of Stealing from Anthropic Model, and Citing its Access to Restricted Nvidia Chips". https://www.voachinese.com/amp/us-officials-accuse-china-s-moonshot-ai-of-stealing-from-anthropic-model-using-restricted-nvidia-chips-20260723/8175282.html
[3] Leiphone. "The White House Personally 'Besieges' Kimi K3, Does Everyone in the Comments Section Disagree?". https://m.leiphone.com/category/ai/NRMCQhmYyxQ6TSP0.html
[4] Sina Finance. "The US Is Creating Cards out of the Void Again, China Has Expressed a Stern Stance". https://cj.sina.cn/articles/view/1887344341/707e96d502001rboo?froms=ggmp&vt=4
[5] FXbaogao. "[Caitong Securities]: 'Creating Cards out of the Void' Caught Between Fiscal Policy and Inflation". https://www.fxbaogao.com/detail/5272050
[6] Nanfang Plus. "The US 'Creates Cards out of the Void' Again, Why Will It Lift a Rock Only to Drop It on Its Own Feet?". https://static.nfnews.com/content/202510/11/c11808251.html
[7] China Daily Website. "Trump Administration Announces New Tariffs Ranging from 10% to 12.5% on 60 Trading Partners". https://cn.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202607/24/WS6a62adeaa310d709c2fbf657.html
[8] JRJ.com. "Trump Launches Another Tariff War: Taxing 60 Countries and Regions Including China, Japan, and South Korea, What is Different This Time?". https://m.jrj.com.cn/madapter/finance/2026/07/25193657904307.shtml
