The United States government has updated its economic blacklist last Friday that adds the world’s largest drone maker to its roster, China’s SZ DJI Technology Co., among other Chinese companies.
Previously reported by Reuters as merely a possibility, the latest coverage confirms that the Chinese drone maker is indeed already a part of a list that also includes China’s biggest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).
The reason for the said companies losing favor from the Whitehouse boils down to a censure that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross claims as the Communist government’s “ubiquitous surveillance to repress its citizens in Xinjiang and elsewhere.”
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In conjunction with DJI, AGCU Scientech, China National Scientific Instruments and Materials, and Kuang-Chi Group add to the list, essentially making the big four offenders, as they “enabled wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance.”
Adding to the aforementioned transgression is the fact that they “facilitated the export of items by China that aid repressive regimes around the world, contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests,” according to the department.