China has a new US trade war weapon, but who and what will be covered, and how will it be enforced?
- Beijing has yet to provide details of its ‘entity list’ to punish ‘unreliable’ companies and individuals that was announced last week
- State media speculates it is a response to Washington’s decision to blacklist telecommunications giant Huawei
Three days after China announced its plan to create an “entity list” of foreign companies and individuals that are deemed to be hurting Chinese interests, there are more questions than answers about the mechanism that could put many multinationals into a Catch-22 situation amid the intensifying rivalry with the United States.
The ministry did not immediately specify the possible consequences, nor did it directly link the move to the treatment of Huawei or China’s technology rivalry with the US.
China’s state media, though, made it clear that Beijing is doing so in response to the US decision last month to place Huawei on a trade blacklist that could effectively ban US companies from supplying components and software to the Chinese telecommunications giant.
Zhi Luxun, director of the industry and security bureau within the Commerce Ministry, was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying on Saturday that Beijing would consider four factors in deciding whether to blacklist a foreign entity.