All about DJI, the Chinese drone group hit by Biden
The United States will blacklist eight Chinese companies to limit American investments: there is also DJI, which dominates the drone sector. Here's what we know
The US Treasury Department will blacklist eight Chinese companies with the aim of banning American entrepreneurs from investing in entities linked to the Beijing military complex.
WHICH ARE THE PENALTY COMPANIES
Sixty Chinese companies are already on the list, and among the latest additions – motivated by their involvement in surveillance operations of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang – is DJI, the largest manufacturer of commercial drones in the world.
Then there are Megvii and CloudWalk Technology, which develop facial recognition software; Dawning Information Industry, Leon Technoogy and NetPosa Technologies, which deal with cloud computing; Xiamen Meiya Pico, a cybersecurity company that collaborates with the police authorities; Yitu Technology, which operates in the field of artificial intelligence.
All these eight companies are already present in the entity list of the United States Department of Commerce: it is a list of foreign subjects – such as companies, in fact, or research organizations – considered dangerous for American national security and therefore subject to restrictions of commercial nature. Entities included in the list cannot freely access technologies or components developed in the United States; trading can only take place upon the issuance of licenses by the US government, but contacts are generally denied.
THE NEXT STEPS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
Joe Biden's administration has already announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics due to Uyghur repression practices in Xinjiang: it is estimated that over one million of them, along with other ethnic minorities, have been confined to camps. detention in the region. The US House of Congress has also passed a law (the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act) banning imports of products from Xinjiang that do not prove to have been made without forced labor.
The Financial Times writes that Washington will list a dozen other Chinese companies on the entity list – for example some that deal with biotechnology – and could tighten the restrictions on the sale of American technologies to SMIC, the main producer of microchips in China (a sector crucial for economic competitiveness but on which Beijing is lagging behind, and is trying to catch up).
WHAT DJI DOES
DJI was included in the entity list at the end of the term of ex-president Donald Trump. And it refused to comment on the inclusion of the blacklist , writes the Financial Times .
The company – full name is SZ DJI Technology Co. – was founded by Frank Wang, is based in Guangdong and makes drones mainly for commercial purposes (shooting and photography), but its products have also been used by security forces. Chinese. In 2017, for example, it announced a "strategic cooperation" agreement with Xinjiang authorities on the provision of drones for police operations.
In addition to being the largest drone manufacturer in the world, DJI occupies a dominant position in the US market, the main one for its business: it has a 77 percentshare ; Intel, in second place, falls short of 4.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/dji-droni-lista-nera-stati-uniti/ on Thu, 16 Dec 2021 13:26:08 +0000.