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Biden Order Bans Investment in Dozens of Chinese Defense, Tech Firms (reuters.com) 98

Posted by msmash from the further-crackdown dept.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that bans U.S. entities from investing in dozens of Chinese companies with alleged ties to defense or surveillance technology sectors. From a report: The move, which his administration says expands the scope of a legally flawed Trump-era order, drew anger from Beijing. The Treasury Department will enforce and update on a "rolling basis" the new list of about 59 companies, which bars buying or selling publicly traded securities in target companies, and replaces an earlier list from the Department of Defense, senior administration officials told reporters. The order prevents U.S. investment from supporting the Chinese military-industrial complex, as well as military, intelligence, and security research and development programs, Biden said in the order. "In addition, I find that the use of Chinese surveillance technology outside the PRC and the development or use of Chinese surveillance technology to facilitate repression or serious human rights abuse constitute unusual and extraordinary threats," Biden said, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China.
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Biden Order Bans Investment in Dozens of Chinese Defense, Tech Firms More

Biden Order Bans Investment in Dozens of Chinese Defense, Tech Firms

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  • Is It Wise (Score:5, Funny)

    by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @11:32AM (#61454096)

    To piss off the folks who make all our stuff?

    • Re:Is It Wise (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @11:34AM (#61454104)

      Yes. It's much wiser to do it now, than wait 10 more years and be even more dependent on China.

      • Re:Is It Wise (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @11:47AM (#61454146) Journal

        EXACTLY - Its long PAST time we move to a cold war footing with China.

        China means to not just end American hegemony but to replace it with their own. While its impractical and maybe even immoral to expect the USA to remain master of the world forever, we should want to preserve our independence. This is really about our continued ability to live our own cultural values - and for you Democrats the ability to democratically decide what those values are in the future rather than having them be dictated to you by China.

        If there is one thing our society needs to unite on its recognition that China does not plan to just passively coexist, they are not expansionist in the way Soviet Communism was but in the soft power we will determine your economic fortunes mercantilist fashion we have been! That makes them a far greater threat than the Soviets EVER WERE and certainly than Putin's Russia is today.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          WTF does this even mean? "but in the soft power we will determine your economic fortunes mercantilist fashion we have been!" Is it English?

        • Re:Is It Wise (Score:5, Insightful)

          by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @01:30PM (#61454550)

          we should want to preserve our independence

          But that's not what actual Americans want. That's the thing. People act like the American government held a gun to companies' heads and ordered them to move to China. The reality is these companies moved to China because it was cheaper to go there. And because it was cheaper, they could make a bigger profit margin. Additionally, people like buying cheap shit. Heck we did the whole "Made in America" thing back in the 80s and American consumers largely ignored it, because they wanted cheap shit.

          I mean it's fine if the Government wants to put a halt on things like China steel dumping. Cool. But the thing is Americans still want cheap shit. One, because we get paid shit and so we don't exactly have disposable income for nice things. Two, because there's this urge to push people into have more quantity over quality. Because companies like it when say, you buy a new phone every year or every other year. But if you had a good quality serviceable device that would last you, well shit that's just un-american!

          So okay cool. We enter into such a relationship with China, I'm not against that idea. That's not solving the core issue here. There is a whole mentality in America that ALSO needs to be solved. Otherwise, we stop with China, and it all just moves to some other country over the course of the next ten to twenty years. And then all we're doing is playing wack-a-mole.

          This is really about our continued ability to live our own cultural values

          And that's the point, our "cultural values" are not conducive currently to your stated end-goal of independence. We have to empower people and that is by giving them the lion's share of profit in this country, not all profit go to a few people. And we need to encourage goods that shine in quality, that it's a good mark of something when we can have things that last five/ten/fifteen/or whatever years and not just trade up every umpteen months.

          So cool. Go after China. But if we don't address the issues within at the same time. We're just setting ourselves up for repeat. I mean we can do the China thing right away and get some time on the domestic issues, but it ain't forever. And I am absolutely NOT trying to diminish what you've got there, but this is a very two sides of the coin kind of issue and it's important to at the very least have a footnote somewhere indicating that. Yes, go after China, but yes, we also need to make the common man, the man on top not the crazy ass shit we've got going on currently. Those both need to kind of happen to really ensure we don't find ourselves just doing this same old thing again, but with a different face. I mean it's pretty simple, if people can afford a $1000 washer made in America that'll last them eight to ten years, they'll buy the American washer. But if they can't afford it, they'll buy the cheap shit from overseas that they'll need to replace in two to six years. The everyday man has to have the dollars in their pocket, otherwise, the everyday man is going to be dependent on cheap shit that comes from somewhere else.

        • This is really about our continued ability to live our own cultural values - and for you Democrats the ability to democratically decide what those values are in the future rather than having them be dictated to you by China.

          Not sure what you're saying there...Democrats have values that align with China?...or that Republicans don't care about democracy?

          I KNOW the first is false and I am pretty confident the second is false as well. Republican politicians may do all they can to suppress the votes, but I have faith the average Republican voter wants his or her votes counted correctly. Sure...they want to win, but I have faith the actual voters have limits and don't actually want to do away with Democracy. They love Trump, b

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            FUCK YOU! you know perfectly well what I meant that liberal reformers want to change basic operating principles of our country. You also know that conservatives don't agree with you on that; but I am saying even people like you should line up with conservatives on the point of preserving national security, identity and independence because if the PRC has its way YOU won't even be able to advocate for the changes you'd like to see. You lept to the conclusion I think Democrats want to live in China because i

            • I meant that liberal reformers want to change basic operating principles of our country.

              I am not even sure I know what that sentence means ...

    • To piss off the folks who make all our stuff?

      I can get by without plastic garbage from Walmart. And global pandemics.

    • Seems many actions short of rolling over and capitulation anger power mongers, wherever they reside, Beijing of course among the grandiose ambitions. Minor gesture since most of those Co do not need US linked investors. Huawei private.
    • We'd have a tough 1-2 years but we still have a *lot* more manufacturing capacity than you realize. That's one of the things the Military Industrial Complex is for. It allows us to maintain manufacturing capacity domestically without impacting businesses ability to use cheap overseas labor.

      • The problem right now is that there are entire supply chains tied up in China. The good news is that, with COVID-related parts shortages, companies are working to diversify their supply chains away from one source, meaning other countries are going to be brought in. In the US, especially, they are looking at creating supply chains in South America, particularly Brazil. This will make it easer in the future to move away from using China as your entire manufacturing base. However, we aren't quite there yet.

  • President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that bans U.S. entities from investing in dozens of Chinese companies with alleged ties to defense or surveillance technology sectors

    Is virus-research [factcheck.org] — with its obvious military applications — included? (No, no, Dr. Fauci, who previously claimed "the risk is worth it" [nypost.com], didn't kill himself...)

    Interestingly, any move by the previous US President against China was denounced as "racist" — even by the same people [aclu.org], who support discrimin [aclu.org]

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Interestingly, any move by the previous US President against China was denounced as "racist"

      Fact check: false

      Just because Trump did some racist things because he is a big fat racist doesn't mean everything he did was called racist.

      Of course, some of the things he did that were right may have been done with the wrong intentions, but most of us were pointing out that, for example, the actions against Huawei were backed by the intelligence community to the handful of Chinese shills in this community.

      • Just because Trump did some racist things because he is a big fat racist doesn't mean everything he did was called racist.

        The bar for racism was set so low the previous four years that I don't think the word means a whole lot anymore.

  • a few years ago, someone here suggested to make June 4 (the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre) Free Speech Day. The executive order comes one day early.

  • Why is Xiaomi on this list? I thought we just removed them from a similar list.

  • Trivial virtue-signalling. The US needs a broad industrial policy that is couple with strategic goals, and which includes a broad assault on Chinese dominance and success in many industries. This order is a joke, as is Biden.

    • I am agreement in the virtue signaling and need for a national industrial policy. But I think the post also demonstrates how we as a society get instantly distracted by the my team vs. your team mentality. It's totally true that when one administration does something their opponents will bash it, but when the next administration does the same thing, they get congratulated.

      The issues at hand need to be reviewed, thought about, debated, on an individual basis. Yet our congress will s--tcan a good idea jus

  • Puts the right pressure on Chinese leadership (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mark of the North ( 19760 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @12:16PM (#61454240)

    This is exactly the kind of pressure that needs to be exerted on the CCP. Over the last five years, the CCP's foreign policy, and domestic policy as it regards "foreigners", has moved from horrible to truly disgusting. We need more countries to take a similar stance as the U.S. under Biden.

    And since this is a site for nerds, here's a fun exercise: Put some Chinese designed and manufactured bits of networked hardware on their own VLAN. Set up the firewall to allow connections to the outside world, but to log everything. I did this with some mid-range but highly recommended security cameras. They called home way more than I was comfortable with. Worse, the amount of data *sent* was too large to be queries for updates or simple telemetry, and its not like these were cloud cameras. There shouldn't have been any traffic heading outside of our network. Naturally, we configured the firewall to cut them off from the outside world, and only to allow access to/from the server that consumes the security video (a Shinobi server). We eventually replaced the cameras with models from Axis, just to be on the safe side, but still kept the firewall policies in place.

    Just imagine what sort of stuff you could sniff with a network-connected device that phoned home for updates every so often. If that device were on a small company's main network with no controls in place, as most are... Now imagine the harm a nation-state could do with control of a network of those devices. Still want to buy a network-enabled device from a no-name company that could be under the thumb of the CCP? Are the cost savings worth it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      All this will so it's make China redouble efforts to cut the US out of intern international trade and from markets where China has influence. In other words exactly what the US is doing.

  • Legendary Australian Journalist John Pilger is waaaay ahead on this and his Documentary "The Coming War on China" will provide insight on exactly what the United States and Allies are up to here.

    • The CCP is the Fentanyl pipeline into the US via the Mexican cartels. The casualties from drug overdoses is surpassing all foreign wars combined.

      Add IP theft, hacking into companies & government plus China's belligerence in the South China sea.

      War started from West Taiwan years ago.

  • I'm waiting (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 )
    What about Israel?

  • ...as to what is to be done about existing investments in any of those Chinese firms. Does the Executive Order require entities to not invest in certain Chinese businesses apply retroactively? Are we requiring US "entities" to divest themselves of these Chinese businesses?

    If so, does the executive order have a requirement as to WHEN these businesses must be divested? If so, the stock market(s) are going to be interesting. Imagine the IRA's and 401K's that might be affected by a FORCED selloff of some o

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