Chinese tech firms denounce latest additions to US trade blacklist as speculation mounts that Beijing will retaliate
- The US Commerce Department said on Friday it was putting 24 more Chinese governmental and commercial organisations on its so-called ‘Entity List’
- The latest sanctions up the ante in a growing tech war between the world’s two-largest economies, which are jostling for supremacy in new technologies
Chinese technology firms roundly condemned a move by the US administration to add another 33 companies and government organisations to its trade blacklist, in a move that ups the stakes in a tech stand-off between the US and China.
The US Commerce Department said on Friday it was putting 24 more Chinese governmental and commercial organisations on its so-called “Entity List”, which prevents them from buying US-made technology, on national security grounds – including internet security company Qihoo 360 Technology Co., cloud robot and services start-up Cloudminds and lidar company Skyeye Laser Technology.
China’s Ministry of Public Security Institute of Forensic Science and eight other Chinese companies were also added to the list over Beijing’s alleged treatment of Uygur Muslims and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities, including state-backed artificial intelligence (AI) unicorn CloudWalk and AI start-up Intellifusion.
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Qihoo 360 said it “firmly opposed this irresponsible [US] accusation” and opposed the US Department of Commerce’s “politicisation of business activities and technological research and development”.
“The US Department of Commerce’s sanctions, which attempt to weaken China’s cybersecurity defence capabilities, will only benefit various hacking organisations and activities and will have a negative impact on global cybersecurity,” the company said in a statement on Saturday.
The latest sanctions up the ante in a growing tech war between the world’s two-largest economies, which are jostling for supremacy in a range of new technologies such as 5G mobile networks and AI. The move also comes amid heightened tensions between the US and China over the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and access to US capital markets for Chinese companies.
The US added China telecoms giant Huawei Technologies to its entity list on national security grounds last May and later added a raft of Chinese AI start-ups due to alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang province.