China slams US for blacklisting 28 firms over so-called abuses

CHINA strongly condemns and opposes blacklisting 28 Chinese entities by the United States over so-called human rights abuses in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

China also urges the US to immediately correct its wrong position on China’s “legitimate action against terrorism.”

The Trump administration added 28 Chinese organizations involved in voice and facial recognition to the US blacklist.

They included listed-firms like iFlytek, Hikvision, Dahua Technology and Xiamen Meiya Pico. Other firms such as Yixin Science and Technology, SenseTime and Megvii, which have raised several billions of dollars in the capital market, were also on the list.

The US said the companies’ artificial intelligence technologies have been used for “human rights violations and abuses.”

Before that, Huawei Technologies had already been added in the US Entity List.

Briefing the media, Geng Shuang, spokesperson for Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the US uses that groundless allegation as an excuse to restrict Chinese entities, and called the move a serious violation of the basic norms governing international relations, and gross interference in China’s internal affairs.

Geng reiterated that measures including setting up vocational education and training centers aim to counter-terrorism and eradicate extremism, have been well recognized and supported by the international community.

China will continue to take resolute measures to safeguard its national security and interests, said Geng, urging the US to rescind the decision and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs.

Several listed Chinese tech firms said they were “deeply disappointed” and “strongly opposed” being included on the list, which blocks them from buying American products and technologies.

Listed firms including iFlytek, Hikvision and Dahua halted stock trading in the morning session yesterday.

“We develop most core technologies by ourselves and we have backup plan (on the list). The list will bring very limited influence to our business operation,” iFlytek said in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange yesterday.

iFlytek uses AI mainly on education and health-care sectors, China’s top voice recognition technology firm said.

SenseTime said it is “deeply disappointed” with this decision and it has been actively developing an AI code of ethics to ensure its technologies are used in a responsible way.

SenseTime is focused on computer vision and deep learning, with customers in education, medical diagnosis, smart city, transportation, communications and entertainment industries.

Hikvision, China’s biggest video surveillance system provider, “strongly opposed” the decision.

Megvii “expresses a strong protest” for being added in the list “without any facts and evidences”, the company said.

Megvii has obeyed all rules and ethics on data privacy and security policies, the company said.

(Shanghai Daily/Xinhua)