Increase the pressure! The U.S. Treasury Department has included entities and individuals from five countries, including China, on its list and imposed investment restrictions on a Chinese enterprise

Source: World Wide Web

The pace of the United States' suppression of Chinese enterprises continues.

On December 10, local time, the U.S. Treasury Department used the so-called "human rights violations" as an excuse to include a total of 15 individuals and 10 entities from five countries in China, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, and Bangladesh in the sanctions list of the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, including 3 Chinese citizens and a number of Chinese enterprises. In addition, the U.S. Treasury Department has also included China SenseTime Technology Co., Ltd. in the so-called "list of military-related enterprises" and imposed investment restrictions.

Previously, the British "Financial Times" quoted informed sources on the 9th to predict that the US government plans to ban U.S. investment in Chinese smart giant SenseTime on the 10th local time, at the same time, the Us "Wall Street Journal" said that the United States seeks to prevent China's largest chip manufacturer SMIC from purchasing chip manufacturing tools in the United States.

According to people familiar with the matter, SenseTime will be included in the U.S. Treasury Department's "list of military-related enterprises" this Friday. The same day was the time when SenseTime was ready to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. According to the relevant U.S. policy, once included in the list, U.S. investors will not be able to trade with SenseTime in the market, which may complicate SenseTime's Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) plan this month, because SenseTime's shareholder list includes investors from the United States. According to SenseTime's IPO prospectus, Silver Lake Capital and Qualcomm in the United States participated in the investment in SenseTime. As of the early morning of Beijing time on the 11th, Silver Lake Capital and Qualcomm did not comment on the relevant reports.

This is the second time that SenseTime has been suppressed by the United States. In October 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce added SenseTime to the Entity List on the grounds of so-called "human rights." At that time, Chinese enterprises that were added to the Entity List along with SenseTime were Dahua Technology, Hikvision, iFLYTEK, Megvii Technology, etc., which faced export controls from the United States, that is, specific U.S. goods, technologies or services could not be provided to these companies without the permission of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Separately, U.S. officials plan to discuss a Defense Department proposal this month to close regulatory loopholes that would allow another Chinese company, SMIC, to buy key U.S. technology, people familiar with the matter said. Although it has previously been included in the "entity list" of the US Department of Commerce, SMIC has been able to continue to buy US tools to make chips, US media said.

Information revealed by people familiar with the matter also shows that U.S. officials are considering adding more Chinese technology companies to the Commerce Department's "Entity List" and the Treasury Department's list of prohibited U.S. investments in the coming months. Still, the Wall Street Journal said that while officials at some agencies have pushed for a tougher approach to China, some Commerce Department officials still oppose some of these plans because they believe they will harm the interests of American companies.

The United States' groundless suppression of Chinese enterprises has been resolutely opposed by the Chinese side, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman has repeatedly called on the United States to stop abusing state power and generalizing the concept of national security to suppress foreign enterprises.

Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, said in an interview with the Global Times reporter on the 10th that the continuous expansion of the scope of suppression of Chinese enterprises shows that the United States continues to "decouple" from China in high technology. The field of science and technology, especially the military-related science and technology field, is not within the so-called "scope of cooperation with China" delimited by the United States itself, and the United States may continue to use all means to suppress China's scientific and technological development in the future. The wrong practices of the United States are not conducive to China and the United States, and are not conducive to the security of the global industrial chain supply chain and the recovery of the world economy.