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US slaps sanctions on 33 Chinese companies and institutions, dialling up the tension amid the lowest point in US-China relations
- Two dozen companies and institutions including the tech giant Qihoo 360 Technology were placed on the first so-called entity list for “supporting procurement of items for military end-use in China”
- Nine entities were put on a second list for their alleged roles in rights violations in the Xinjiang region
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The United States government has slapped sanctions on 33 Chinese companies and institutions, putting them on two so-called entity lists as it dials up the hostility during the lowest point in US-China relations in decades.
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Two dozen government institutions and Chinese companies, including the software giant Qihoo 360 Technology, were placed on the first list for “supporting procurement of items for military end-use in China,” according to a May 22 statement by the US Department of Commerce.
The Institute of Forensic Science under the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, and eight companies were added to a second list with restricted access to US technology because they are “complicit in human rights violations and abuses … against Uygurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,” according to a second statement by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). This second list of nine supplements the bureau’s October 2019 sanctions on 28 entities for the same charge.
“The new additions to the Entity List demonstrate our commitment to preventing the use of US commodities and technologies in activities that undermine our interests,” US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
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The latest sanctions add to the litany of grievances between the two largest economies on earth, as the jostling from almost two years of the US-China trade war extended into disputes in technology and cybersecurity, access to Wall Street’s capital market and even to the origin of the current coronavirus pandemic.
For many of these sanctioned firms and institutions, access to US technology and doing business with US companies are critical in their operations, and their inclusion in the entity list makes it difficult for them to receive export licenses for US software and hardware.
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