U.S. Blacklists 33 More Chinese Entities

What’s new: Another 33 Chinese entities have been added to a U.S. economic blacklist over allegations they violated human rights and pose a threat to U.S. national security, the nation’s Department of Commerce announced on Friday.

The entities targeted are mostly research organizations and companies in surveillance, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. 

They include Qihoo360, a major Chinese cybersecurity firm and CloudWalk, a Shanghai-based cloud startup.

What now: Blacklisted firms are effectively barred from purchasing products and services from U.S. companies, unless the American firms first obtain a government license.

Analysts said the U.S. sanctions would have little impact on some of the firms because they have already diversified their suppliers, after seeing peers such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. blacklisted previously.

Others will seek to replace their U.S. suppliers with those from other companies.

Many of the companies previously targeted by the U.S. have seen little impact from the sanctions. For example, Iflytek Co Ltd., a voice-recognition specialist blacklisted in October, still saw sales grow 27% for the year.

However, Huawei was forced to refocus its smartphone business on the domestic market after its international ambitions were clipped by a blacklisting in May 2019 listing. That stopped Huawei from doing business with Google LLC, which makes the ubiquitous Android operating and popular apps like Youtube and Gmail.

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use. To read the full Caixin article in Chinese, click here. 

Related: Chinese Companies Protest Inclusion in U.S. Export Blacklist

Contact reporter Mo Yelin (yelinmo@caixin.com) and editor Flynn Murphy (flynnmurphy@caixin.com)