The Mercury News

Huawei employees hit with U.S. travel ban

State department also looking at limiting TikTok app

- By Matthew Lee

The Trump administra­tion said Wednesday it will impose travel bans on employees of the Chinese technology giant Huawei and other Chinese companies the U.S. determines are assisting authoritar­ian government­s in cracking down on human rights, including in China’s western Xinjiang province.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said the administra­tion is finalizing plans to minimize data theft from the popular Chinese video streaming app TikTok, although he stopped short of saying it would be banned outright.

Pompeo made the announceme­nts a day after the British government said it would ban Huawei from its 5G networks over concerns that sensitive data could be compromise­d by the Chinese Communist Party.

Pompeo told reporters at a State Department news conference that Huawei employees found to be providing “material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally” would be hit with sanctions.

“Companies impacted by today’s action include Huawei, an arm of the CCP’s surveillan­ce state that censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang and the indentured servitude of its population shipped all over China,” he said. “Certain Huawei employees provide material support to the CCP regime that commits human rights abuses.

“Telecommun­ications companies around the world should consider themselves on notice: If they are doing business with Huawei, they are doing business with human rights abusers,” Pompeo said.

At a later event sponsored by The Hill newspaper, Pompeo said the administra­tion was also looking at how to prevent data theft from TikTok and other Chinese companies.

“Whether it’s TikTok or any of the other Chinese communicat­ions platforms, apps, infrastruc­ture, this administra­tion has taken seriously the requiremen­t to protect the American people from having their informatio­n end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “And so we are working through a process where all the relevant agencies and the private sector are getting to say their piece. We hope to have a set of decisions shortly which will reflect this central understand­ing.”

It is not clear how many Huawei employees would be affected. Huawei says on its website that it has more than 194,000 employees in more than 170 countries and regions.

The U.S. has led a worldwide campaign to convince foreign government­s, particular­ly those in allied nations, to bar Huawei from their advanced telecommun­ications networks, arguing that allowing them into those systems would lead to violations of their citizens’ privacy.

The U.S. has also threatened NATO and other allies with curtailmen­ts or suspension­s in intelligen­ce sharing and cooperatio­n should they allow Huawei components or technology in their high-speed networks.

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