As he campaigns for a second term, former president Donald Trump has made a tough stance toward China central to his pitch on foreign policy.

But if Trump is elected on Nov. 5, both he and China’s leaders would confront an awkward reality: many of the top candidates for foreign policy jobs in a Trump administration are sanctioned by China and barred from the country.

Soon after President Joe Biden took office in 2021, China took the unprecedented step of sanctioning 28 former Trump administration officials for their roles in what Beijing saw as anti-China policies, in a gamble that the former president’s days in the White House were over.