U.S. Expands List of Chinese Tech Companies it Says Assists Beijing’s Military

The list of Chinese military-linked companies, which the Defense Department revises annually, is an expansion from last year underscoring the view from U.S. national-security officials that China leverages its private sector to build and improve military technology. New additions this year include a range of Chinese consumer and tech companies, including electric carmaker BYD, pharmaceutical firm WuXi AppTec and humanoid robotics company Unitree.

“This demonstrates the administration sees real national security risks associated with Chinese products in sectors beyond semiconductors and AI,” said Chris McGuire, a former State Department and National Security Council official, who now specializes in China matters at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Alibaba is a Chinese conglomerate with e-commerce, cloud computing and other businesses in the U.S., while Baidu is a Chinese internet search and artificial intelligence company.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said the Pentagon was “overstretching the concept of national security and making discriminatory lists to go after Chinese companies.”

The list’s release, and its inclusion of China’s leading businesses, comes at a notable moment for the Trump administration and its ties to Beijing. Since the fall, the administration has curbed plans to impose penalties on certain Chinese companies, levy hefty tariffs and investigate China-linked hackers.

This year’s initial list was released in February, but was immediately rescinded. The clawback came ahead of President Trump’s meeting last month with Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart. Trade between the countries was high on the agenda of the summit in Beijing.

Inside the Pentagon, China continues to be considered a top military adversary. “The summit lowered the temperature on trade, but it didn’t change Washington’s core assessment that China’s commercial technology champions remain integral to Beijing’s military modernization,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan think tank.

A Defense Department spokesperson said the Pentagon took the list down to review it for updates, and published a new list after making changes. In the intervening months, the department added back to the list chip companies Yangtze Memory Technologies and ChangXin Memory Technologies, which in the February version had been removed.

Companies on the list are barred from doing business with the U.S. military. Sometimes the reputational damage can affect sales to other parts of the government or to American consumers. However, in cases like SZ DJI Technology’s drones, which were added to the list in 2022 but remained popular with American consumers, the designation does little to impede the company’s U.S. sales.

The addition to the list on Monday of China-founded router company TP-Link Technologies follows a recent federal prohibition on all new sales of foreign-made routers over administration concerns they could pose supply chain and cybersecurity risks.

U.S.-based TP-Link Systems is seeking an exemption to the ban on foreign-made routers. “TP-Link Systems is not the subject of this designation or its associated restrictions,” a spokeswoman said.

The Defense Department has faced legal challenges for the process it uses to designate Chinese companies as military entities. In one instance, the department briefly removed Hesai, which makes sensor technology used in American self-driving cars, after the company sued the administration. Hesai, which previously said the designation caused “serious reputational injury, a significant drop in stock price, and lost business opportunities,” has returned this year’s list.

This year’s list also removes about 10 businesses that were on prior lists that the Pentagon said no longer qualified as Chinese military entities.

Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, WuXi AppTec, Unitree, Hesai, and the Chinese chip companies added to the list didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Write to Heather Somerville at [email protected]