A federal U.S. government list of Chinese firms initially deemed to be military companies was “withdrawn” on Friday morning, weeks prior to President Donald Trump’s potential trip to Beijing.
The new withdrawal notice appeared on Feb. 13 in the U.S. Federal Register, which is bound by law requiring the secretary of defense—Pete Hegseth, in this instance—to identify and publish a list of Chinese military companies annually until Dec. 31, 2030, in accordance with the Fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.
"An agency letter requesting withdrawal of this document was received after placement on public inspection," the Federal Register, without further reasoning, said in an editorial note besides the document labeled “withdrawn.”
“The Office of the Federal Register (OFR) publishes on behalf of Federal entities but has no involvement with their policies or programs,” the Federal Register told Military.com. “We are responsible only for the accuracy of the content of the Federal Register and its codification in the CFR [Code of Federal Regulations], which must reflect what the agency submitted for publication in the Federal Register. OFR staff do not provide legal advice or assistance.”
A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the list and new notice.
The firms are labeled under a list formally known as Section 1260H. Chinese companies including Alibaba Group Holding, Baidu, BYD, WuXi AppTec and RoboSense Technology were added to the list while others, like memory chip manufacturers Yangtze Memory Technologies and ChangXin Memory Technologies, were removed.
The move comes one day after the Trump administration reportedly tabled multiple tech security measures targeting Beijing ahead of Trump’s expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April—including a ban on China Telecom's U.S. operations and restrictions on sales of Chinese equipment for U.S. data centers, according to multiple sources who spoke with Reuters.
Those reported holds involve proposed bans on domestic sales of routers made by TP-Link and the U.S. internet business of China Unicom and China Mobile, in addition to barring sales of Chinese electric trucks and buses in the U.S.
Companies Speak Out
Alibaba, an e-commerce and online retail entity, was one of the first companies to speak out about being put on the list in the first place.
“There’s no basis to conclude that Alibaba should be placed on the Section 1260H list,” a company spokesperson told the South China Morning Post. “Alibaba is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy.”
The e-commerce, retail, internet and technology company – often referred to as the “Amazon of China” – indicated it plans to pursue legal action against the inclusion.
A spokesperson for Baidu, a Chinese online search and AI company, said the company “categorically rejects” its inclusion.
We are a publicly listed company, and our products and services are designed for civilian use. We will not hesitate to use all options available to us to have the company removed from the list.
Tariff battles and connecting Chinese companies to military prowess could be a harbinger for Trump-Xi talks this spring, though no dates have formally been announced. While companies on the Federal Register list cannot be sanctioned, the U.S. Department of Defense under a new law the department will be prevented in coming years from contracting and procuring from companies on the list.
