Military vehicles carrying DF-5B intercontinental ballistic missiles take part in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 2019, to mark the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.
Greg Baker | AFP | Getty Images
The Biden administration said Thursday it was “severely” restricting dozens of mostly Chinese organizations, including no less than one chipmaker, over their efforts to make use of advanced technologies to assist modernize China’s military.
The 36 entities will face “stringent license requirements” that hamper their access to certain U.S.-produced commodities, software, and technologies — including artificial intelligence and advanced computing, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said in a press release.
The Bureau’s latest motion comes greater than two months after the Biden administration imposed latest curbs on China’s access to advanced semiconductors.
The brand new designations also take aim at Russia-linked entities supporting that country’s military invasion of Ukraine, the agency said.
The actions will protect U.S. national security by squelching Beijing’s ability to “leverage artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and other powerful, commercially available technologies for military modernization and human rights abuses,” Alan Estevez, undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, said within the press release.
“This work will proceed, as will our efforts to detect and disrupt Russia’s efforts to acquire crucial items and technologies and other items for its brutal war against Ukraine, including from Iran,” Estevez said.
One in all the businesses added to the so-called entity list was Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation, or YMTC, a key Chinese chipmaker that had previously been added to the U.S. Unverified List, one other trade-restricting designation.
“I’ve long sounded the alarm on the grave national security and economic threats behind YMTC and other CCP-backed technology corporations, like CXMT and SMIC,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in an announcement Thursday morning.
“YMTC poses a right away threat to our national security, so the Biden Administration needed to act swiftly to forestall YMTC from gaining even an inch of a military or economic advantage,” Schumer said.
Thursday’s press release specified that 30 of the groups were being added to the entity list for activities related to their efforts to acquire U.S. materials so as to bolster China’s military modernization. 4 more were added because of “their significant risk of becoming involved in activities that would have a negative impact” on U.S. national security of foreign policy, in line with the discharge.
One other entity was added for its alleged involvement in China’s human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups in Xinjiang, in addition to for allegedly helping Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps obtain U.S. items.
The Biden administration also said it will lift some restrictions on a net total of 25 Chinese entities that successfully complied with U.S. checks to confirm that its exported goods were getting used in the way in which the entities claimed.