US Additions to Entity List Are 'Economic Bullying,' China Says

China “welcomes” the Commerce Department’s decision last week to remove 25 Chinese companies from the Unverified List but criticized the agency’s decision to add other firms to the Entity List, calling the move “economic bullying.” In a Dec. 16 statement, China’s Ministry of Commerce said the U.S. “has ignored the fact that Chinese and American companies conduct normal commercial transactions and trade exchanges, ignored the strong voices of Chinese and American industries, generalized the concept of national security” and “abused export control and other measures,” according to an unofficial translation of the statement.

“The frequent inclusion of Chinese companies in the ‘Entity List’ by the U.S. interferes with the normal economic and trade cooperation between Chinese and U.S. companies,” the ministry said. The agency called on the U.S. to “immediately stop its erroneous practices and return to the correct path of maintaining the rules of the multilateral trading system with the [World Trade Organization] as the mainstay.” The U.S. last week added a range of Chinese technology companies to the Entity List, including top chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (see 2212150021).