US Cracks Down on Chinese Companies for Security Concerns

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday added 36 firms and organizations, together with a serious Chinese language chip maker, to a so-called entity record that may severely prohibit their entry to sure merchandise, software program and applied sciences.

The motion, which is geared toward additional stymieing China’s efforts to develop superior semiconductors, is the newest step within the Biden administration’s marketing campaign to clamp down on China’s entry to applied sciences that might be used for army functions.

Administration officers say that China has more and more blurred the traces between its army and civilian industries, prompting the US to put restrictions on doing enterprise with Chinese language firms that will feed into Beijing’s army ambitions. In October, the administration introduced sweeping limits on semiconductor exports to China, each from firms inside the US and in different nations that use American know-how to make these merchandise.

“Immediately we’re constructing on the actions we took in October to guard U.S. nationwide safety by severely proscribing the PRC’s capability to leverage synthetic intelligence, superior computing, and different highly effective, commercially obtainable applied sciences for army modernization and human rights abuses,” Alan Estevez, the underneath secretary of commerce for trade and safety, stated in an announcement, referring to the Individuals’s Republic of China.

Among the many most notable firms added to the record is Yangtze Reminiscence Applied sciences Company, an organization that was stated to be in talks with Apple to probably provide elements for the iPhone 14.

The U.S. authorities says the focused firms are producers and purveyors of applied sciences that would pose a major safety threat to the US, like superior chips which can be used to energy synthetic intelligence and hypersonic weapons, and elements for Iranian drones and ballistic missiles.

Some firms, together with Y.M.T.C. and its Japanese subsidiary, had been added to the record as a result of the administration stated they posed a major threat of transferring delicate gadgets to different firms sanctioned by the U.S. authorities, together with Huawei Applied sciences and Hikvision.

The Commerce division stated that one other entity, Tianjin Tiandi Weiye Applied sciences, was added for its position in aiding China’s marketing campaign of repression and surveillance of Uyghurs and different Muslim minority teams within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Area, in addition to offering U.S. merchandise to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Twenty-three of the entities — specifically, these supplying superior chips used for synthetic intelligence with shut ties to the Chinese language army and protection trade, and two Chinese language firms that had been discovered to be supporting the Russian army — had been hit with even more durable restrictions.

The businesses will probably be topic to what’s often known as the international direct product rule, which is able to reduce them off from shopping for merchandise made anyplace on this planet with using American know-how or software program, which might embody most world know-how firms.

The Biden administration additionally stated it could raise restrictions on some firms that had efficiently undergone U.S. authorities checks that ensured their merchandise weren’t getting used for functions that the federal government deemed dangerous to nationwide safety.

As a part of the restrictions unveiled in October, the Biden administration positioned dozens of Chinese language companies on a watch record that required them to work with the U.S. authorities to confirm that their merchandise weren’t getting used for actions that may pose a safety threat to the US.

A complete of 25 entities accomplished these checks, in cooperation with the Chinese language authorities, and thus have been faraway from the record. 9 Russian events that had been unable to clear these checks had been added to the entity record, the division stated.

A spokesperson for the Commerce Division stated that the actions demonstrated that the US would defend its nationwide safety but in addition stood able to work in cooperation with firms and host governments to make sure compliance with U.S. export controls.