US Plans To Add 36 Chinese Companies To Trade Blacklist

The Biden administration plans to impose trade restrictions on an additional 36 Chinese companies, including the country’s top chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies, according to a report published Thursday by the Financial Times.

The Financial Times report says those 36 companies will be added to the US Entity List “as early as this week.” Companies placed on the Entity List are banned from conducting business transactions with US suppliers unless they received a special export license from the US Department of Commerce.  This is the US’s latest effort to block Chinese companies, which Washington sees as a threat to national security, from buying American technology including chips and components. In October, the administration announced sweeping restrictions on semiconductor exports to China both for US companies and those operating overseas that use American technology to make such products.

This entity list designation is the same one the US government had earlier assigned to Huawei. It eventually led to damaging consequences on the Chinese telecom’s smartphone business and also forced it to sell its sub-brand Honor.  Yangtze Memory, which is based in Wuhan, has emerged as China’s largest producer of memory chips and was reportedly in talks to supply Apple before the discussions were called off in October amid US pressure.

Earlier this year, the Financial Times reported that Yangtze Memory seemed to have violated US export restrictions by supplying Huawei with memory chips for its smartphones.

Yangtze Memory didn’t immediately respond to a CNET request for comment.