China responds to US blacklisting its biotech firms

34 entities, including the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), were added to the blacklist on Wednesday – prohibiting them from purchasing any US technology. Before Wednesday’s additions, the blacklist already contained over 260 Chinese companies, including popular smartphone manufacturer Huawei.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC blasted the US decision as “unwarranted suppression” and vowing to take “all essential measures” to protect China’s businesses.

“China’s development of biotechnology has always been for the well-being of mankind. The relevant claims of the U.S. side are totally groundless,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu stated in a statement on Thursday.

Liu was firing back at the allegations by US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo who earlier accused China of developing biotechnologies to “support [the] Chinese military” with “purported brain-control weaponry.”

Raimondo claimed that Beijing was using the cutting-edge tech to exercise mind control over “members of ethnic and religious minority groups,” referring to Uighur Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The US and its allies have accused the Chinese government of violating human rights of the ethnic group, with Washington declaring a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Games in China citing alleged “crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang. Beijing has squarely denied the allegations, insisting that its internal issue has been used by the West for political manipulation.

This week, the US also imposed sanctions on four Chinese drug companies, deeming them responsible for trafficking fentanyl and other prohibited drugs to the US. The move likewise drew swift pushback from Beijing, with a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman denouncing the sanctions as “the erroneous acts” and urging Washington to “look for causes of the abuse of fentanyl from within” the country.

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