The Biden government first action against Chinese assets after assuming power, comes with the US Commerce Department decision on Thursday to add seven Chinese supercomputing entities to a U.S. economic blacklist citing national security concerns as reported by CNBC.

The Commerce department reportedly added Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center, Sunway Microelectronics, the National Supercomputing Center Jinan, the National Supercomputing Center Shenzhen, the National Supercomputing Center Wuxi and the National Supercomputing Center Zhengzhou to its blacklist.

The seven entities were reportedly blacklisted for “building supercomputers used by China’s military actors, its destabilizing military modernization efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction programs.”

The CNBC report also pointed out that the U.S. officials have complained for a long time that Chinese companies are obliged to collect sensitive information on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army benefiting Chinese military interests. Although the official position of the Chinese Communist Party has been that it does not engage in industrial espionage. 

The U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo reportedly stated that, “Supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of many – perhaps almost all – modern weapons and national security systems, such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,”

She further added that, “The Department of Commerce will use the full extent of its authorities to prevent China from leveraging U.S. technologies to support these destabilizing military modernization efforts”.

The new rules takes effect immediately, which would restrict U.S. exports to the said entities in question. However, they do not apply to goods from U.S. suppliers that are already en route.

The said blacklisted companies would now have to apply for licences to access American technologies, including chip infrastructure designed by Intel and other US chipmakers.

Notably, the former President Donald Trump government had blacklisted a huge number of Chinese companies to its economic blacklist, including the country’s top smartphone maker, Huawei, top chipmaker SMIC and the largest drone manufacturer, SZ DJI Technology as they were suspected of using American cutting edge technology for military purposes.

News input CNBC. Image sourced from internet.

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