The United States is gearing up to uproot “red assets,” an analyst said after Washington moved to ban Americans from investing in dozens of Chinese military firms.
On June 3, President Joe Biden signed an executive order blacklisting 59 Chinese defense and surveillance technology firms. The ban expands on a Trump-era order, which covered a total of 44 companies, to address “the threat posed by the military-industrial complex of the People’s Republic of China.” It will take effect on Aug. 2, giving investors one year to divest shares from the targeted companies.
“It’s a cleanup of the U.S. capital and assets—to purge the red assets,” Su Tzu-yun, director of Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times.
Li Hengqing, a Washington-based China analyst, said the decision reflects a more confrontational approach toward China.
“The national strategy that the United States has set up is to engage in full-fledged competition,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s a competition on every front, rather than just a single aspect.”
Across Washington, there is rare bipartisan consensus to be tough on China. Both the House and Senate have been advancing comprehensive bills seeking to push back on the regime’s economic coercion and human rights abuse.
Kurt Campbell, the U.S. coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs, also recently declared that “the period that was broadly described as engagement has come to an end,” a remark that some experts have interpreted as signaling a shift in global sentiment toward the Chinese Communist Party.
“The two countries are now in a confrontational relationship. Why would I invest money in my rival to make it more powerful, so that it can turn around to counter me? It’s such a simple principle,” Li said.
Those under the latest ban include surveillance firm Hikvision, which the United States had previously flagged for its role in aiding human rights abuses in Xinjiang; telecom equipment maker Huawei; China’s largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation; and all three of the country’s state-owned phone carriers
BY EVA FU
