U.S. Adds Chinese Tech Firms to Export Blacklist

The Biden administration has extra 7 Chinese tech corporations to an export blacklist, accusing them of building supercomputers for China’s military services.

The addition of the businesses to the Commerce Department’s Entity Listing means U.S. corporations simply cannot export engineering to them without having a license. According to the division, they are “involved with building supercomputers employed by China’s military services actors, its destabilizing military services modernization attempts, and/or weapons of mass destruction systems.”

“Supercomputing abilities are critical for the improvement of a lot of — perhaps almost all — modern day weapons and national stability systems, this kind of as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a information launch.

“The Department of Commerce will use the whole extent of its authorities to avert China from leveraging U.S. technologies to aid these destabilizing military services modernization attempts,” she extra.

The Entity Listing has existed for several years but as CNN studies, “during the Trump administration, the U.S. authorities started incorporating Chinese organizations to the checklist at a more quickly tempo, starting with businesses this kind of as Huawei, the international telecommunications giant.”

Lindsay Gorman, a engineering specialist at the German Marshall Fund, said that by utilizing a resource that was routinely employed by his predecessor, Biden experienced “put to bed” any perception that he would not be challenging on China.

“It was an open up [issue] whether a favored resource of the Trump administration would be ongoing in the Biden administration,” he informed the Fiscal Periods.

The businesses extra to the checklist on Thursday include things like Tianjin Phytium Information and facts Know-how, Shanghai Large-Effectiveness Built-in Circuit Design and style Heart, Sunway Microelectronics, and four Nationwide Supercomputing Centers in Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi, and Zhengzhou.

“The U.S. is worried about China getting entry to American engineering that aids the People’s Liberation Military near the gap with the U.S. military services and industry weapons that could change the equilibrium of electric power in the Indo-Pacific,” the FT said.

Phytium reportedly works by using engineering from two California-dependent businesses, Cadence Design and style Systems and Synopsys. The Entity Listing shift would not bar them from providing the Chinese corporations if that engineering is produced in amenities outside the house of the U.S.

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