In its ongoing battle against China, The US government has now taken a stricter step. They have decided to ban smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp and China’s third-biggest national oil organization. The government had accused the companies of having links with the Chinese military. The measure was taken by the current president Donald Trump in his last week in office. This move is bound to put huge pressure on Bejing.
The Department of Defense included the name of nine companies that allegedly have links with the military. Xiaomi and Comac, Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China are on the list.
The government has given the deadline till November this year for US companies to withdraw their stakes in these Chinese companies. An executive order was signed by Trump in November to finalize the decision. Xiaomi has not commented on the situation.
Xiaomi Corp has become the world’s third-largest smartphone maker in the world in terms of sales in the third quarter of 2020, as per the data by Gartner. The company has overtaken Apple Inc as well. The market share of the company skyrocketed after Huawei was banned by the US and other European countries and suffered a huge drop in sales. The smartphones from Huawei were also banned from essential services from Google.
In a separate incident, the US Commerce Department has placed the name of China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC)on a list that is an economic blacklist that prevents US companies from exchanging technologies from companies in the list without permission from the government. After more than 60 Chinese companies were added to the list, the government has come up with more names in the new order.
CNOOC has been involved in the offshore drilling in the conflicted waters in the South China Sea. The area has been a disputed place for Beijing going in conflict with several countries like Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and even the US.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced, ‘China’s reckless and belligerent actions in the South China Sea and its aggressive push to acquire sensitive intellectual property and technology for its militarisation efforts are a threat to U.S. national security and the security of the international community.’
He added that CNOOC had been acting aggressively and being unfair to China’s neighboring countries. According to his the organization acted like a bully for the Peoples Liberation Army. He said, ‘and the Chinese military continues to benefit from government civil-military fusion policies for malign purposes.’
Like Xiaomi, CNOOC did not comment on the matter.
Ross said that Chinese state-owned company Skyrizon was also put on the list for trying to ‘acquire and indigenize foreign military technologies.’
Skyrizon Aviation was established by Wang Jing. The company was included in the US blacklist because in 2017 it tried to occupy a military aircraft engine maker from Ukraine, Motor Sich. The US fears that advanced aerospace technology could come into the hands of the military.
