Sanctions that accomplish nothing except slowing American domestic development and increasing inflation.
The USSR also slapped constant sanctions on everyone outside their sphere. It got so bad at some time points that even American made clothing was banned. It didn't make them better at developing new tech nor make their people have better life quality.
As the total economic gap between China and America is just widening while on the indivudal life quality front, China is advancing while US is stalled, I think Beijing is just going for the least risky and easiest strategy of waiting them out.
Managing their decline is not just a way 1 street of piling on pressure, its also needed to have some basic dialogue.
U is a heavily drunk beefy guy waving a machine gun at the neighborhood; C and R are two other machine gun-armed beefy guys who could individually take on U, but right now they are working in their own ways to prevent U from shooting at anybody and everybody, waiting for U to fall asleep eventually.
(And there is a fatty standing by the side going "Look at me, look at me. I could kick all your asses if I wanted to. But not today. Maybe next week.")