U.S. Adds Chinese Tech Firms to Export Blacklist
The Biden administration has additional seven Chinese tech companies to an export blacklist, accusing them of setting up supercomputers for China’s military.
The addition of the companies to the Commerce Department’s Entity Listing usually means U.S. companies can not export technological innovation to them with no a license. According to the division, they are “involved with setting up supercomputers made use of by China’s military actors, its destabilizing military modernization efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction programs.”
“Supercomputing capabilities are essential for the advancement of numerous — maybe pretty much all — contemporary weapons and national stability devices, this kind of as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo stated in a information launch.
“The Section of Commerce will use the comprehensive extent of its authorities to avoid China from leveraging U.S. systems to support these destabilizing military modernization efforts,” she additional.
The Entity Listing has existed for yrs but as CNN reports, “during the Trump administration, the U.S. authorities started introducing Chinese enterprises to the list at a more rapidly rate, starting with companies this kind of as Huawei, the world wide telecommunications big.”
Lindsay Gorman, a technological innovation pro at the German Marshall Fund, stated that by working with a device that was often used by his predecessor, Biden had “put to bed” any sense that he would not be hard on China.
“It was an open [query] no matter whether a favored device of the Trump administration would be continued in the Biden administration,” he explained to the Financial Periods.
The companies additional to the list on Thursday contain Tianjin Phytium Data Engineering, Shanghai High-General performance Integrated Circuit Style and design Heart, Sunway Microelectronics, and four National Supercomputing Facilities in Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi, and Zhengzhou.
“The U.S. is anxious about China getting entry to American technological innovation that aids the People’s Liberation Army near the hole with the U.S. military and discipline weapons that could alter the stability of power in the Indo-Pacific,” the FT stated.
Phytium reportedly works by using technological innovation from two California-centered companies, Cadence Style and design Methods and Synopsys. The Entity Listing shift would not bar them from giving the Chinese companies if that technological innovation is made in facilities outside the house of the U.S.