The United States is continuing an order banning American investors from financing companies linked to the Chinese military, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday.
"[T]he PRC [People's Republic of China] is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses, which continues to allow the PRC to directly threaten the United States homeland and United States forces overseas," Biden wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The ban stems from an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump last December, which blocked investors, including American investment firms and pension funds, from purchasing shares of Chinese entities deemed by the Defense Department as "owned or controlled by" the Chinese military, The Epoch Times reported.
Biden expanded the scope of the restrictions in June, where the Treasury Department was tasked with selecting targeted entities and updating a blacklist on a rolling basis. The blacklist currently covers 59 Chinese companies, including telecom network suppliers Huawei and ZTE, state-owned video surveillance manufacturer Hikvision, semiconductor maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), and national oil company CNOOC.
Huawei, ZTI, and Hikvision have contributed to Beijing's spying on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
The Epoch Times adds Beijing leverages private sector technological innovations in order to advance its defense capabilities under the national strategy known as "civil-military fusion," and, after China reportedly tested a hypersonic weapon, 17 Republican lawmakers wrote to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo with concerns the PRC possibly co-opted American technologies in the creation of its weapons system.
The PRC's military-industrial complex and its use of surveillance technology for repression "continue to constitute unusual and extraordinary threats" to America's economy, foreign policy, and national security, Biden wrote.
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