A nonprofit is asking the Treasury Department to sanction seven Chinese companies after its reporting revealed their alleged ties to forced labor in China’s seafood industry (see 2310100030). The Outlaw Ocean Project, a Washington-based investigative journalism non-profit, said it submitted a petition to Treasury calling for human rights sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act against the seven companies and their affiliates, who are “complicit in serious human rights abuses” against Xinjiang workers.
Exports to China
The European Commission on Jan. 11 set duties on bulb flats from Turkey and China, the Directorate-General for Trade announced. Bulb flats are steel products used to fortify ship hulls in passenger cruise ships and military vessels. The AD rate will be 23% for imports from China and 13.6% for imports from Turkey.
Members of the U.K. Parliament this week questioned whether the government should be imposing more restrictions on China, including through human rights sanctions on Hong Kong officials and export restrictions on a broader range of Chinese technology companies. They also urged the U.K. to share the results of a possible review of its arms export policies toward Israel, which at least one member said hasn’t been transparent.
Navy Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao was sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for sending U.S. military information to a Chinese intelligence officer, DOJ announced. Zhao pleaded guilty in October to one count of conspiring with an intelligence officer and one count of receiving a bribe, DOJ said.
The U.S. shouldn’t rush to impose new export controls on sensitive lidar technology, experts said, mostly because American firms may not have chokepoints over lidar and the restrictions may hurt U.S. export revenue.
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Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chairman of the House Select Committee on China, has urged the Commerce Department to consider placing the United Arab Emirates-based artificial intelligence firm Group 42 Holdings (G42) on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List, citing possible export control risks from the company’s work with China’s military, intelligence services and state-owned companies.
China imposed sanctions on five American defense-related entities for their involvement in U.S. military sales to Taiwan, a spokesperson for the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Jan. 7, according to an unofficial translation. The designations target BAE Systems Land and Armaments, Alliant Techsystems Operations, AeroVironment, Viasat and Data Link Solutions. Beijing said the sanctions will freeze any of their property in China and bar Chinese businesses, organizations and people “from conducting transactions, cooperation and other activities with them.”
The U.S. should push for export controlled semiconductors to be installed with a mechanism that would automatically bar those chips from being used in ways that violate U.S. export restrictions, researchers said in a new report this week. They said this would significantly aid export enforcement efforts and could potentially allow compliant chip companies to sell to a broader range of customers.
A congressional proposal to allow the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to reopen or alter previously mitigated transactions when national security risks have increased would discourage foreign investment in the United States, an expert at the Center for a New American Security said in written comments posted Jan. 4.