WASHINGTON –
The U.S Defence Department added extra Chinese corporations, together with drone maker DJI Technology and surveillance tools maker Zhejiang Dahua Technology, to a blacklist that topics them to an investment ban for Americans.
BGI Genomics Co Ltd, which runs a large gene databank and has DNA-sequencing contracts with well being companies and universities worldwide, and CRRC Corp, which engages within the manufacture and sale of rail transit tools, had been additionally among the many 13 corporations added to the checklist launched by the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Last 12 months, a Reuters assessment of scientific papers and firm statements discovered that BGI developed its prenatal assessments in collaboration with the Chinese navy and was utilizing them to gather genetic information for sweeping analysis on the traits of populations.
“The Department is decided to spotlight and counter the People’s Republic of China’s Military-Civil Fusion technique, which helps the modernization targets of the People’s Liberation Army by making certain its entry to superior applied sciences and experience are acquired and developed by PRC corporations, universities, and analysis packages that seem to be civilian entities,” the Pentagon mentioned in an announcement.
The checklist bars shopping for or promoting publicly traded securities in goal corporations.
An preliminary tranche of about 50 Chinese corporations that included telecoms tools maker Huawei HWT.UL had been added to the U.S. checklist in June final 12 months.
At that point, President Joe Biden signed an government order that banned U.S. entities from investing within the dozens of Chinese corporations with alleged ties to defence or surveillance expertise sectors.
The order aimed to forestall U.S. investment from supporting the Chinese military-industrial complicated, in addition to navy, intelligence, and safety analysis and improvement packages.
It was a part of Biden’s broader sequence of steps to counter China, together with reinforcing U.S. alliances and pursuing giant home investments to bolster American financial competitiveness, amid more and more bitter relations between the world’s two largest economies.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; enhancing by Chris Sanders and Leslie Adler