U.S. Cracks Down on Chinese Tech Firms

The Biden administration has slapped an investment ban on eight Chinese tech companies, citing their assist for Beijing’s repression of the Uyghur minority.

The most current additions to a listing of companies designated as owned or controlled by the Chinese armed service features DJI, which is the premier maker of drones. Less than a Trump-era executive order, Americans can not trade in the securities of companies on the listing.

The eight companies actively assist the biometric surveillance and monitoring of ethnic and spiritual minorities in China, notably the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, according to the Treasury Office.

“Today’s action highlights how non-public companies in China’s defense and surveillance engineering sectors are actively cooperating with the government’s attempts to repress associates of ethnic and spiritual minority teams,” Brian Nelson, Less than Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, mentioned in a information release.

“Treasury continues to be committed to making certain that the U.S. fiscal technique and American traders are not supporting these actions,” he extra.

In a linked shift, the Commerce Office extra China’s Academy of Military Health-related Sciences and its eleven exploration institutes to a trade blacklist, proscribing entry to U.S. exports.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondi mentioned China was making use of biotechnology and clinical innovation “to go after manage around its folks and its repression of associates of ethnic and spiritual minority teams.”

According to Axios, “The U.S. is cracking down aggressively on just about any company — American or Chinese — considered to be complicit in the Chinese government’s genocide of Uyghur Muslims in the northwest area of Xinjiang.”

The U.S. had extra DJI to the trade blacklist past yr. The company “has supplied drones to the Xinjiang Community Safety Bureau, which are applied to surveil Uyghurs in Xinjiang,” the Treasury Office mentioned.

The seven other entities on Treasury’s listing involve Cloudwalk Know-how, Dawning Information and facts, Leon Know-how, Megvii Know-how, Netposa Systems, Xiamen Meiya Information and facts, and Yitu.

The Chinese embassy in Washington named the actions “unwarranted suppression” that violated free trade regulations, introducing that Beijing would consider “all important measures” to uphold the passions of Chinese companies and exploration institutions.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Pictures

blacklist, China, Commerce Office, Treasury Office, Uyghur