US-China tech war: American tech bill locks Huawei on Washington’s trade blacklist as the company plays up its cybersecurity credentials
- The Chinese telecoms giant can only be removed from the Entity List if the US finds that it no longer poses an ongoing threat to critical infrastructure
- New bill dashes previous hopes that a Biden presidency would ease certain technology restrictions on the Shenzhen-based company
A bill aimed at bolstering America’s technological power to counter China, which was passed by the US Senate on Tuesday, has singled out Huawei Technologies Co as a threat and prohibits the Commerce Department from removing it from a trade blacklist.
TikTok, the popular short-video sharing app operated by Beijing-based ByteDance, is also named in the bill but the legislation only stipulates that the app should be banned from all government devices.
“The US is in the beginning stages of a second ‘moon shot moment’ in its modern history and China’s technology companies are the new competition,” said Alex Capri, Singapore-based research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation. “It has become impossible for US policymakers to separate companies like Huawei from Chinese state-driven initiatives and objectives. It is a paradigm shift … to a kind of selective mercantilism and techno-nationalism. This is just the beginning.”
Earlier this week, Biden added two Huawei financing arms to a list that prohibits Americans from investing in Chinese companies that the administration says have ties to the Chinese military or sell surveillance technology used against religious minorities and dissidents. Investors can no longer buy new securities in these companies on American markets starting from August 2, and existing US investors have been given a year to divest their holdings.
