The Trump administration is cutting off several tech companies from sourcing components from the US on claims they helped the Chinese government deploy a high-tech surveillance system to monitor Muslim ethnic groups.
On Monday, the Department of Commerce effectively blacklisted 20 government security bureaus and eight companies in China for their role in helping local authorities surveil, repress, and detain mass numbers of Muslim Uighurs in the country's Xinjiang region.
"This action will ensure that our technologies, fostered in an environment of individual liberty and free enterprise, are not used to repress defenseless minority populations," US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
The blacklisted companies include Chinese AI-focused startups Megvii, SenseTime, Yitu, in addition to video camera vendor Hikvision, which have been reportedly developing surveillance systems across Chinese cities that can monitor local citzens using facial-recognition technology. According to The New York Times, the systems have also been designed to identify whether a person is a Uighur, and keep a record of the subject's whereabouts, which can then be reviewed by authorities.
The Chinese government has detained more than a million Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region at re-education camps, say human rights groups. Beijing has defended the actions on claims the country is working to stop terrorism. However, the Commerce Department on Monday called out the activities as a "campaign of repression."
The eight Chinese tech companies will now need to apply for licenses from the Commerce Department to secure IT-related imports from US suppliers such as Intel, Qualcomm, and Microsoft. As a result, the blacklisting could cripple their businesses from expanding in China and abroad.
The Chinese government is urging the Trump administration to lift the order, claiming the US is interfering in the country's internal affairs. "The US criticism is nothing more than fact-distorting gibberish, which only further reveals the country's malicious intention to impede the counter-terrorism efforts in Xinjiang and stability and development of China," the country's foreign ministry said on Tuesday.