US Blacklists Tech Companies Helping Chinese Military

The U.S. Department of Commerce added several Chinese technology companies to its trade blacklist Wednesday for providing technological support to the Chinese military.

The Commerce Department added the firms to its Entity List, which imposes severe trade restrictions on covered entities, characterizing the companies as “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

“Global trade and commerce should support peace, prosperity, and good-paying jobs, not national security risks,” Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement. “The Department of Commerce is committed to effectively using export controls to protect our national security.”

Eight tech companies operating out of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were added to the Entity List over fears of economic espionage. The companies could acquire and use U.S. emerging technologies “for the PRC’s quantum computing efforts that support military applications,” such as submarine cloaking technology and anti-encryption software, the Department of Commerce said. Those technologies would help modernize the Chinese military and pose a national security threat to the U.S., according to the Commerce Department.

In addition to the Chinese firms, the Commerce Department added 16 companies to the Entity List accused of aiding Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons, and added the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology to its Military End User (MEU) List, which imposes license requirements on covered entities.

“Today’s actions will help prevent the diversion of U.S. technologies to the PRC’s and Russia’s military advancement and activities of non-proliferation concern like Pakistan’s unsafeguarded nuclear activities or ballistic missile program,” Raimondo said.

The blacklisted companies included Hangzhou Zhongke Microelectronics Co., Ltd., Hunan Goke Microelectronics, New H3C Semiconductor Technologies Co., Ltd., Xi’an Aerospace Huaxun Technology, and Yunchip Microelectronics for helping modernize China’s military, as well as Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, QuantumCTek Co., and Shanghai QuantumCTeck Co., Ltd. for acquiring U.S. military technology to help China.

The U.S. also blacklisted three affiliates of Corad Technology Limited, a company already on the Entity List.