U.S. Adds Chinese Tech Firms to Export Blacklist

The Biden administration has additional 7 Chinese tech firms to an export blacklist, accusing them of setting up supercomputers for China’s military services.

The addition of the businesses to the Commerce Department’s Entity Listing signifies U.S. firms can’t export know-how to them without a license. In accordance to the office, they are “involved with setting up supercomputers applied by China’s military services actors, its destabilizing military services modernization attempts, and/or weapons of mass destruction applications.”

“Supercomputing capabilities are very important for the growth of a lot of — most likely pretty much all — modern weapons and nationwide safety techniques, these as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo explained in a information launch.

“The Office of Commerce will use the total extent of its authorities to avoid China from leveraging U.S. technologies to support these destabilizing military services modernization attempts,” she additional.

The Entity Listing has existed for yrs but as CNN studies, “during the Trump administration, the U.S. govt commenced incorporating Chinese enterprises to the record at a quicker tempo, starting with businesses these as Huawei, the world wide telecommunications large.”

Lindsay Gorman, a know-how expert at the German Marshall Fund, explained that by using a instrument that was routinely used by his predecessor, Biden had “put to bed” any perception that he would not be hard on China.

“It was an open [query] irrespective of whether a favored instrument of the Trump administration would be continued in the Biden administration,” he instructed the Financial Periods.

The businesses additional to the record on Thursday involve Tianjin Phytium Information and facts Technology, Shanghai Superior-Overall performance Integrated Circuit Structure Heart, Sunway Microelectronics, and 4 National Supercomputing Centers in Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi, and Zhengzhou.

“The U.S. is concerned about China getting accessibility to American know-how that helps the People’s Liberation Army shut the hole with the U.S. military services and discipline weapons that could change the stability of energy in the Indo-Pacific,” the FT explained.

Phytium reportedly makes use of know-how from two California-dependent businesses, Cadence Structure Methods and Synopsys. The Entity Listing transfer would not bar them from providing the Chinese firms if that know-how is produced in facilities outside of the U.S.

Biden administration, blacklist, China, Commerce Office, Entity Listing, exports, supercomputing