U.S. hits China’s DJI, others with sanctions over ‘rights abuse’

Companies accused of complicity in oppression of Uighurs

Chinese drone maker DJI holds a demonstration of a drone. File

The U.S. government hit dozens of Chinese companies with investment and export restrictions on Thursday, including top drone maker DJI, accusing them of complicity in the oppression of China’s Uighur minority or helping the military, further ratcheting up tensions between the world’s top two economies.

Blaming DJI and seven other tech firms for supporting “the biometric surveillance and tracking” of Uighurs, the U.S. Treasury Department added them to a list of entities suspected of having Chinese military links, barring Americans from trading in their securities.

Separately, the Commerce Department added China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and its 11 research institutes to a trade blacklist, restricting access to U.S. exports. It said such aid included “purported brain-control weaponry” without defining the technology further.

The department also added HMN International, formerly Huawei Marine, Jiangsu Hengtong Marine Cable Systems, Jiangsu Hengtong OpticElectric, Shanghai Aoshi Control Technology Co, Ltd, and Zhongtian Technology Submarine Cable to the list over U.S. allegations of acquiring, or attempting to acquire, technology from the U.S. to help modernise the People’s Liberation Army.

UN experts and rights groups estimate that more than a million people, mainly Uighurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in recent years in a vast system of camps in China’s far-west region of Xinjiang.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said China is choosing to use biotechnologies “to pursue control over its people and its repression of members of ethnic and religious minority groups.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Wang Wenbin, said the measure approved on Thursday “indicates that the U.S. has no scruples about smearing China by every means.”

“China strongly deplores and rejects that and urges the U.S. to immediately correct its mistake. China will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese institutions and enterprises,” he said.