I'm not sure what can be done. Fortunately I'm not a policy maker, so I don't need to know :)

But just as a casual reader of Sinocism, I can think of several hawkish moves that would probably annoy Chinese elites more than American elites. Restricting visas or even denying entrance to party members would be one. Ditto for ex- or current-PLA. Magnitsky-style asset freezes on the whole NPC, provincial standing committees etc, no exceptions. Kicking Chinese-owned companies off the American stock exchange, or mandating a level of regulatory compliance that makes it very inconvenient or undesireable for them to list in America. Put country of origin quotas on golden visas like the diversity lottery, or just block Chinese applicants altogether. I'm sure economists could come up with a few more.

Is sending their children to university in the west really the only thing Chinese people with political influence care about? If that's the only avenue of leverage that exists, then it seems to me that the west does not have much leverage at all.