Tag: blacklist

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US adds drone maker DJI and 7 other Chinese companies to investment blacklist

The US Treasury Section announced Thursday that it has placed investment decision constraints on the firms due to their roles in facilitating human rights abuses towards China’s Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and other ethnic and spiritual minorities.

As a end result, American investors will be barred from purchasing or selling shares of the companies.

“Today’s motion highlights how personal companies in China’s protection and surveillance technological know-how sectors are actively cooperating with the government’s endeavours to repress associates of ethnic and religious minority teams,” explained Brian Nelson, undersecretary for terrorism and economic intelligence. “Treasury continues to be fully commited to guaranteeing that the U.S. fiscal method and American traders are not supporting these activities.”

The information was broadly predicted just after becoming 1st claimed by the Fiscal Instances earlier this 7 days.
DJI and the seven other providers are by now on the US entity list, which signifies they are barred from shopping for US products and solutions or importing American technological innovation with no a specific license.

Dozens of Chinese firms and organizations had been extra to that export blacklist by the US Commerce Office on Thursday, in a bid to restrict China’s use of US systems for military services applications and for alleged human rights violations.

Thursday’s twin announcements arrived a week just after Treasury slapped identical economic sanctions towards two Chinese politicians and a Chinese synthetic intelligence agency, SenseTime.

SenseTime delays its IPO after being hit by another US blacklist

The drone maker declined to remark in advance of the US Treasury’s announcement on Wednesday. As an alternative, it referred CNN Organization to a preceding assertion designed in response to earlier limits final December, when it explained it experienced “carried out very little to justify getting put on the entity checklist.”

DJI additional at the time that it was also “analyzing possibilities to guarantee our shoppers, companions, and suppliers are handled reasonably,” with no elaborating even further. It declined to provide an update or remark on those people strategies this 7 days.

Washington’s latest clampdown could build financing complications for the upstart drone maker, which is privately held and headquartered in Shenzhen.

DJI at present counts Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital China and Kleiner Perkins as investors. Sequoia Money China declined to remark and Kleiner Perkins did not reply to a ask for for remark on regardless of whether the restriction would complicate their investments.

But according to a individual familiar with the issue, Sequoia’s investment in DJI is handled by Sequoia Cash China, which operates as a different lawful entity from the US company.

That signifies it would likely not be impacted by any restriction barring American investment decision in DJI, the person mentioned.

Turning up the heat

Washington has been piling force on Chinese organizations a short while ago.

Very last Friday, synthetic intelligence startup SenseTime was also strike by the exact US Treasury blacklist as DJI, two years right after one of its subsidiaries was set on the entity listing in 2019.

Likewise, the Treasury Office stated that the choice to block SenseTime was thanks to the position its technologies allegedly played in enabling human legal rights abuses towards the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

SenseTime has strongly denied the accusations. But on Monday, the business postponed its stock marketplace debut in Hong Kong, where by it was set to start off buying and selling as soon as this 7 days.

The company stated the hold off was “to safeguard the passions of the possible buyers of the corporation,” and allow for them to “take into consideration the likely effects of” the US shift on any investments.

US adds a dozen Chinese companies to its trade blacklist

Independently, the FT reported previously this 7 days that US officers were deliberating irrespective of whether to stiffen regulations about marketing to 1 of China’s top rated chipmakers. No action was taken Thursday, on the other hand.

The enterprise, Semiconductor Manufacturing Worldwide Corp (SMIC), has been on the US entity checklist considering that final year. But “the determination bundled a provision that critics mentioned developed a loophole that some providers had exploited,” according to the FT.

SMIC did not react to a request for comment.

However, because it was set on the entity record, “the corporation has confronted great troubles in creation and functions,” SMIC’s acting chairman and main economic officer, Gao Yonggang, reported previous thirty day period.

Separately, last calendar year the US Division of Protection also extra the agency to a checklist of organizations the company statements are owned or managed by the Chinese army. That final decision signifies Us citizens are banned from investing in SMIC.

US strikes at the heart of China's bid to become a tech superpower

China’s Overseas Ministry criticized the United States on Wednesday soon after reports of Washington’s prepared crackdown.

At a briefing, spokesperson Zhao Lijian called on the Biden administration to quit “politicizing” technological and financial challenges by “generalizing the concept of national security.”

“Quit abusing point out ability to unreasonably oppress certain sectors and enterprises of China,” Zhao claimed, warning that sanctions on corporations such as DJI would threaten world industrial and offer chains, and undermine international trade guidelines.

“China will, as generally, firmly protect the respectable legal rights and interests of Chinese corporations,” he included.

— CNN’s Beijing bureau and Jill Disis contributed to this report.

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US to blacklist eight more Chinese companies including dronemaker DJI

The Biden administration will place eight Chinese companies including DJI, the world’s largest commercial drone manufacturer, on an investment blacklist for their alleged involvement in the surveillance of the Uyghur Muslim minority.

The US Treasury will put DJI and the other groups on its “Chinese military-industrial complex companies” blacklist on Thursday, according to two people briefed on the move. US investors are barred from taking financial stakes in the 60 Chinese groups already on the blacklist.

The measure marks the latest effort by US president Joe Biden to punish China for its repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the north-western Xinjiang region.

This week, SenseTime, the facial recognition software company, postponed its planned initial public offering in Hong Kong after the Financial Times reported that the US was set to place the company on the blacklist.

The other Chinese companies that will be blacklisted on Thursday include Megvii, SenseTime’s main rival that last year halted plans to list in Hong Kong after it was put on a separate US blacklist, and Dawning Information Industry, a supercomputer manufacturer that operates cloud computing services in Xinjiang.

Also to be added are CloudWalk Technology, a facial recognition software company, Xiamen Meiya Pico, a cyber security group that works with law enforcement, Yitu Technology, an artificial intelligence company, Leon Technology, a cloud computing company, and NetPosa Technologies, a producer of cloud-based surveillance systems.

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DJI and Megvii are not publicly traded, but Dawning Information, which is also known as Sugon, is listed in Shanghai, and Leon, NetPosa and Meiya Pico trade in Shenzhen.

All eight companies are already on the commerce department’s “entity list”, which restricts US companies from exporting technology or products from America to the Chinese groups without obtaining a government licence.

The White House did not comment and the Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.

DJI declined to comment. But last year, it said it had “done nothing to justify being placed on the entity list” after it was added to the commerce department’s export blacklist at the end of former president Donald Trump’s term.

Zhao Lijian, foreign ministry spokesman, said: “China has always opposed the US’s generalisation of national security concepts and unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies.” He added that Beijing had presented the “facts and truth” of Xinjiang-related issues. “China will . . . resolutely defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies,” Zhao said.

The commerce department is also expected to place more than two dozen Chinese companies on the entity list on Thursday, including some involved in biotechnology, according to the people familiar with the pending action. The commerce department did not respond to a request for comment.

The sanctions action comes as the US has maintained a tough stance over China’s policies in Xinjiang, where more than 1m Uyghurs and other minorities have been held in detention camps. The White House last week announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

The Biden administration on Thursday will also consider tightening rules on US companies selling technology to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, the largest Chinese chip manufacturer. The Trump administration put SMIC on the entity list a year ago, but the decision included a provision that critics said created a loophole that some companies had exploited.

Eric Sayers, head of the Indo-Pacific practice at consultancy Beacon Global Strategies, said Biden was moving into the implementation phase after reviewing many of his predecessor’s technology policies.

“It will be interesting to watch if these targeted but significant steps are just the beginning of a more aggressive approach being driven by the White House or the minimum the inter-agency can muster for now,” said Sayers. “If it’s the former, we could see further restrictions on SMIC and new outbound investment restrictions in the months ahead.”

In another example of Washington’s escalating confrontation with Beijing over Xinjiang, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday that would ban imports from the region unless companies could prove the goods were not produced with forced labour.

The House and Senate earlier reached agreement on a compromise draft of the bill, setting the stage for a vote in the upper chamber of Congress before senators recess for the year-end holidays.

The White House welcomed the agreement over the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, called for Biden to “immediately” sign the legislation after it was passed by Congress.

“Beijing and businesses have long banked on a global willingness to put profits ahead of humans’ rights — even in the face of crimes against humanity,” she said. “Congress rightly shifted the burden of proof to Xinjiang authorities and to companies.”

Jewher Ilham, an activist whose father Ilham Tohti, an Uyghur rights advocate, was jailed for life by China on widely criticised charges of separatism, said it was “promising” that Congress had reached a deal to hold companies “accountable for their complicity in the world’s worst forced labour regime”.

Additional reporting by Maiqi Ding in Beijing

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China criticizes U.S. for putting Chinese firms on trade blacklist

By Chris Sanders

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -China on Thursday criticized the United States for putting a dozen Chinese companies on its trade blacklist over national security and foreign policy concerns, citing in some cases their help developing the Chinese military’s quantum computing efforts.

The Chinese additions to the blacklist maintained by the U.S. commerce department comes amid growing tensions https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/biden-administration-invites-taiwan-its-summit-democracy-2021-11-24 between Beijing and Washington over the status of Taiwan and trade issues.

The department also said several entities and individuals from China and Pakistan were added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List for contributing to Pakistan’s nuclear activities or ballistic missile program.

In total, 27 new entities were added to the list from China, Japan, Pakistan, and Singapore.

China strongly opposes the sanctions on the Chinese companies, and will lodge solemn representations with the United States, Shu Jueting, a spokesperson for the Chinese commerce ministry, said at a news conference on Thursday.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement on Wednesday that the new listings will help prevent U.S. technology from supporting the development of Chinese and Russian “military advancement and activities of non-proliferation concern like Pakistan’s unsafeguarded nuclear activities or ballistic missile program.”

China’s embassy in Washington charged that the United States “uses the catch-all concept of national security and abuses state power to suppress and restrict Chinese enterprises in all possible means.

“China is firmly opposed to that,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said.

He said the United States should “follow the spirit” of a virtual meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-raised-concerns-over-xinjiang-tibet-hong-kong-xi-warns-taiwan-red-line-2021-11-16 last week and “meet China halfway instead of going further down the wrong path.”

China will take all the necessary steps to defend its companies, and reserves the right to take countermeasures against the sanctions, warned Zhao Lijian, spokesman at the Chinese foreign ministry, at a briefing on Thursday.

The U.S. Commerce Department said Hangzhou Zhongke Microelectronics Co Ltd, Hunan Goke Microelectronics, New H3C Semiconductor Technologies Co Ltd, Xi’an Aerospace Huaxun Technology and Yunchip Microelectronics were placed on the Commerce Department’s entity list for their “support of the military modernization of the People’s Liberation Army.”

It also added Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, QuantumCTek and Shanghai QuantumCTeck Co Ltd to the list for “acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of military applications”.

The eight Chinese firms were listed to prevent U.S. technology being used to help China develop quantum computing applications for its military.

The Commerce Department wants to stop the Chinese military from developing its counter-stealth technology, which could include equipment like advanced radars, and counter-submarine applications such as undersea sensors. The action also blocks U.S. material from being used to help China break encryption or develop unbreakable encryption, the Commerce Department said.

Suppliers to companies on the entity list will need to apply for a license before they can sell to them, which is likely to be denied.

Separately, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology was added to the Commerce Department’s military end user list, but the listing did not provide additional information other than it had produced military products.

The entity list has increasingly been used for national security and foreign policy aims since the Trump administration. Chinese telecom company Huawei was added in 2019, cutting it off from some key suppliers and making it difficult for them to produce mobile handsets.

(Reporting by Chris Sanders and Karen Freifeld; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Yew Lun Tian and Jing Xu in Beijing; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Angus MacSwan)