The Pentagon’s recent decision to add several of China’s best-known tech and manufacturing companies to a list of firms linked to the Chinese military is drawing renewed attention to a question at the center of U.S.–China tensions—how independent are Chinese private companies from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
In an updated list released on June 8, the Department of War added a number of major Chinese firms to its Section 1260H list of entities identified as having ties to China’s military-industrial complex.
Newly designated companies include e-commerce platform Alibaba, search engine Baidu, electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD, memory chip manufacturers Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp. (YMTC) and ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), pharmaceutical company WuXi AppTec, robotics firm Unitree Robotics, and lidar manufacturer RoboSense….