US Adds 80 Chinese Companies to Blacklist... Blocking Workarounds for China Sanctions

Added to the Export Restriction List

From the left, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are shaking hands.

The Donald Trump administration in the United States has reportedly added about 80 Chinese companies, including six subsidiaries of Inspur Group, a Chinese cloud computing and big data service provider, to the export restriction list.

According to Reuters on the 26th (local time), the U.S. Department of Commerce added Inspur Group's subsidiaries to the Entity List due to their contribution to the development of Chinese military supercomputers.

Five of the subsidiaries are located in China, and the remaining one is in Taiwan. Inspur Group was previously added to the export restriction list in March 2023 during the former Joe Biden administration for reasons including support for the modernization of the Chinese military. Among the newly added Chinese companies, about 50 are based in China, while the rest are located in Taiwan, Iran, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

U.S. CNBC reported that dozens of Chinese companies involved in the development of high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) chips for military purposes, supercomputers, and advanced AI were included in the sanctions. Among them, two companies are known to have supplied products to Huawei and its affiliated chip manufacturer HiSilicon, which are already under U.S. sanctions.

Alex Capri, a senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore (NUS), told CNBC regarding this measure, "(The U.S.) is casting an increasingly wide net targeting third countries, transit points, and intermediaries," adding, "U.S. authorities will continue to strengthen efforts to track and crack down on the illicit export of advanced semiconductors made by Nvidia and AMD."