US approved 192 licences for exports to blacklisted Chinese firms early 2022
- Between November 2020 and April 2021, suppliers to China’s Huawei got 113 licences worth US$61 billion
- The Commerce Department defended the decisions, saying the licences ‘primarily involve exports of low-technology’
The Biden administration approved 192 licences worth over US$23 billion to ship US goods and technology to Chinese companies on a US trade blacklist in the first quarter of last year, according to a document released by a congressional committee on Friday.
The 192 licences granted were out of 242 licence applications decided between January and March 2022, a chart showed, and 115 of those approved contained controlled technology. Nineteen, or 8 per cent of the total number of applications, were denied, and 31 were returned without action.
Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, released the licence numbers on Friday, after revealing at a hearing on Tuesday that more than US$23 billion worth of licences were approved for suppliers to companies on the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List in the first quarter of 2022.
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In a statement on Friday, McCaul called the approvals unacceptable. “This critical US technology is going to the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance and military efforts,” he said.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) “must and can do more”.
The Commerce Department defended the decisions.
“Every licence reflected in this data – which primarily involve exports of low-technology … and other items that do not pose significant national security concerns … was carefully reviewed,” the agency said in a statement, explaining that the decisions are made by the Departments of Commerce, Defence, State and Energy.
BIS also noted that licenes for some well-known Chinese companies are reviewed under policies set by the Trump administration that do not carry presumptions of denial.
In addition, it pointed out that exporters generally submit licence applications that have a higher likelihood of approval, that licences are generally valid for four years, and that a substantial number are not fully utilised.
Between November 2020 and April 2021, suppliers to China’s Huawei Technologies Co got 113 licences worth US$61 billion, and another 188 licences valued at nearly US$42 billion were approved for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, according to data first obtained by Reuters and released by McCaul in October 2021.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee gave consent to release the latest data this week, but McCaul only disclosed the US$23 billion figure and not the details on the number of licences at Tuesday’s hearing on combating Chinese aggression.
