The US Commerce Department has added 8 Chinese firms and 20 Chinese government agencies to its list of foreign entities that are considered a security risk, which means that US firms aren’t allowed to do business with those entities.
The US “entity list” is the result of an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump earlier this year. The new entries include video surveillance firms Hikvision and Zhejiang Dahua Technology, as well as IFLYTEK, Xiamen Meiya Pico Information and Yixin Science and Technology. Washington had been considering Hikvision for the entity list since May of this year because China uses the surveillance giant’s products to monitor the oppressed Muslim Uyghur minority in its Xinjiang region.
The US Commerce Department accused Hikvision and the other newly blacklisted entities of having been “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghur, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups” in Xinjiang.
Read more: US blacklists 8 Chinese tech companies over human rights issues
