Dozens of Chinese companies added to US blacklist in latest Beijing rebuke

Washington, May 23

The United States mentioned on Friday it could add 33 Chinese corporations and establishments to an financial blacklist for serving to Beijing spy on its minority Uighur inhabitants or due to ties to weapons of mass destruction and China’s navy.

The US Commerce Department’s transfer marked the Trump administration’s newest efforts to crack down on corporations whose items could help Chinese navy actions and to punish Beijing for its remedy of Muslim minorities. It got here as Communist Party rulers in Beijing on Friday unveiled particulars of a plan to impose nationwide safety legal guidelines on Hong Kong.

Seven corporations and two establishments have been listed for being “complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs” and others, the Commerce Department mentioned in a press release.

Two dozen different corporations, authorities establishments and industrial organizations have been added for supporting procurement of things to be used by the Chinese navy, the division mentioned in one other assertion.

The blacklisted corporations give attention to synthetic intelligence and facial recognition, markets that US chip corporations corresponding to Nvidia Corp and Intel Corp have been closely investing in.

Among the businesses named is NetPosa, one in every of China’s most well-known AI corporations, whose facial recognition subsidiary is linked to the surveillance of Muslims.

Qihoo360, a significant cyber safety agency taken personal and delisted from the Nasdaq in 2015, just lately made headlines for claiming it had discovered proof that CIA hacking instruments have been used to focus on the Chinese aviation sector.

The Commerce Department mentioned it was including the corporations and establishments to its “entity list,” which restricts gross sales of US items shipped to them and a few extra restricted objects made overseas with US content material or expertise. Companies can apply for licenses to make the gross sales, however they need to overcome a presumption of denial.

Softbank Group Corp-backed CloudMinds was additionally added. It operates a cloud-based service to run robots corresponding to a model of Pepper, a humanoid robotic able to easy communication. The firm was blocked final yr from transferring expertise or technical data from its US unit to its workplaces in Beijing, Reuters reported in March.

Qihoo, NetPosa and CloudMinds couldn’t be instantly reached for remark.

Xilinx Inc, which makes programmable chips, mentioned not less than one in every of its prospects was on the record however that it believes the enterprise affect might be negligible.

“Xilinx is aware of the recent additions to the Department of Commerce’s Entity List and is evaluating any potential business impact,” the corporate mentioned. “We comply with any new US Department of Commerce rules and regulations.” The new listings comply with an identical October 2019 motion when Commerce added 28 Chinese public safety bureaus and corporations — together with a few of China’s high synthetic intelligence startups and video surveillance firm Hikvision — to a US commerce blacklist over the remedy of Uighur Muslims.

The actions comply with the identical blueprint utilized by Washington in its try to restrict the affect of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd for what it says are nationwide safety causes. Last week, Commerce took motion to attempt to additional lower off Huawei’s entry to chipmakers. Reuters