If push comes to shove in their financial row, the United States could not only sanction Chinese banks, but also seize overseas Chinese assets, a prominent Beijing adviser warned on Wednesday.

Yu Yongding, a senior fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, said at a forum organised by The Beijing News that one possible scenario would be the US imposing sanctions on Chinese banks, as it did in 2012 to Bank of Kunlun, a regional Chinese lender backed by China’s state-owned oil company, for financing deals with Iran.

However, barring Chinese banks from dealing with the US financial system is only one of many ways that the US could inflict pain on China in the financial realm, said Yu, a former adviser to China’s central bank.