“We urge the United States to correct its mistakes,” Wang Wenbin said at a press conference.
Washington:
The U.S. Commerce Department added 11 Chinese companies involved in what it called human rights abuses over China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the western Xinjiang region to an economic blacklist on Monday.
The move, which prevents companies from buying components from US companies without US government approval, has sparked a slander charge from China, which has pledged to take action to protect the rights of its businesses.
The commerce department said the companies were involved in the use of forced labor by Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups.
Among them, many textile companies and two companies, according to the government, were performing genetic analyzes used to strengthen the repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
It was the third group of Chinese companies and institutions to be added to the U.S. blacklist, after two rounds in which the Trump administration cited 37 entities it said were involved in the Chinese crackdown on Xinjiang.
“Beijing actively promotes the reprehensible practice of forced labor and abusive plans to collect and analyze DNA to suppress its citizens,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
In Beijing, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said the United States is trying to oppress Chinese companies and slander Chinese policies in Xinjiang under the pretext of protecting human rights.
“We urge the United States to correct its mistakes,” Wang Wenbin said at a press conference on Tuesday, adding that China would take all necessary measures to protect the legitimate rights of its companies.
Companies added to the blacklist include Nanchang O-Film Tech, an Apple iPhone supplier, which hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook in December 2017, according to the O-Film website. . It is also a supplier to Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft, according to an April congressional letter. US companies did not immediately comment.
The list includes two subsidiaries of the Beijing Genomics Institute, a genomics company linked to the Chinese government, said Senator Marco Rubio.
He said the additions “will ensure that American technology does not help the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, including the forced collection of ‘DNA’.
There is also KTK Group Co, which manufactures over 2,000 products for high speed trains, from electronics to seats; and Tanyuan Technology Co, which assembles graphite-reinforced aluminum composites with high thermal conductivity.
Another company is Changji Esquel Textile Co, which the Esquel Group launched in 2009. Esquel Group produces clothing for Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss.
In a letter to Ross on Monday, Esquel chief executive John Chen called for the unit to be removed from the list. “Esquel does not use forced labor and we will never use forced labor,” Chen wrote. “We absolutely and categorically oppose forced labor.”
Efforts to reach other companies in China for comment have failed outside of regular business hours.
Hetian Haolin Hair Accessories Co. is also blacklisted. On May 1, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it was halting imports of the company’s hair products, citing evidence of forced labor.
On July 1, CBP seized in Newark a shipment of nearly 13 tons of hair products valued at more than $ 800,000 with human hair which it claimed had originated in Xinjiang.
The trade previously added 20 Chinese public security offices and companies, including video surveillance company Hikvision, as well as facial recognition technology leaders SenseTime Group Ltd and Megvii Technology, as part of China’s treatment of Muslim minorities.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Diane Bartz; Additional reporting by Gabriel Crossley in Beijing; Editing by Richard Pullin and Clarence Fernandez)
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
