Blacklisted Chinese Companies Rebrand as American To Dodge Crackdown (wsj.com) 46
American Lidar, a company registered in Michigan in December, is a subsidiary of China-based lidar maker Hesai Group, which the U.S. has labeled a security concern, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing policymakers and national-security experts. Chinese firms facing regulatory or reputational problems are rebranding and creating U.S.-domiciled businesses to sell their wares as the Biden administration expands the government entity lists that restrict Chinese companies' business dealings in the U.S., the report said.
These moves, while legal, irritate regulators who can't enforce laws when it isn't clear who is behind a company. Hesai became a target in the U.S.-China tech-trade war after allegations that its laser sensors could be used to collect sensitive American data, and was added to the Defense Department list that designates companies as Chinese military entities operating in the U.S. BGI Genomics and DJI are also facing similar challenges and are attempting to rebrand or license their technology to American startups to avoid sanctions.
These moves, while legal, irritate regulators who can't enforce laws when it isn't clear who is behind a company. Hesai became a target in the U.S.-China tech-trade war after allegations that its laser sensors could be used to collect sensitive American data, and was added to the Defense Department list that designates companies as Chinese military entities operating in the U.S. BGI Genomics and DJI are also facing similar challenges and are attempting to rebrand or license their technology to American startups to avoid sanctions.
It will probably work, too. Chinese slavers. (Score:5, Informative)
These are the people we buy almost all our stuff from. These are the people we do the majority of our trade with. The also target US industries with Chinese industrial subsidies and have done it super-aggressively for decades, definitely outstripping any analog in the US. These people are not our friends nor are they simply competing with us on a "fair field with no favor".
This kind of thing doesn't happen without corruption at multiple levels. So, my question is, why wouldn't something as simple as changing the name give the same corrupt folks who accepted the last 25 years of Chinese shenanigans a reason to celebrate some old favorites?
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That doesn't make sense. They have far more mosques in China than the US.
Re:It will probably work, too. Chinese slavers. (Score:4)
That doesn't make sense. They have far more mosques in China than the US.
But China is working to fix that.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/... [hrw.org]
https://www.theartnewspaper.co... [theartnewspaper.com]
https://ig.ft.com/china-mosque... [ft.com]
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Are they talking about taking down domes that were placed in late 90s and 2000s in order to look more like S. Arabia? Or is there something actually more to these articles. The same thing happened with burkas as well. Some portion of the muslim population there started to wear burkas which was never a tradition in the area, and therefore later banned.
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The east of China shares a border with 4 Muslim majority nations. The USA has no such relationship to the Muslim world, nearly all Muslims in the US are immigrants and also tend to be far more moderate.
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Worship Muhammed and Allah? People in that region are likely far more devout than in the western world and I imagine the population density is far less as well. The number of mosques doesn't really tell us anything by itself. If there's a village with a couple dozen worshippers is that mosque counted the same as the one that serves hundreds or thousands?
Re: It will probably work, too. Chinese slavers. (Score:3)
We have real slavery here in the USA as well.
Read the 13th and 14th. They can enslave you if they convict you of a crime.
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Oh good point, that is totally the same thing on the same scale with the same impact. How insightful! /s
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There's more people in jail in the US than the total Uyghur population.
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There's more people in jail in the US than the total Uyghur population.
And yet being in jail is an entirely optional thing. There's a specific rule book for how to go to jail and just being someone is not on that list. Comparing breaking the law to simply being Uyghur is a ... no I'm not going to be nice here ... it makes you a total piece of shit.
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There is a lot of modern slavery too, especially involving undocumented migrants and other vulnerable groups. The UK has a similar, but smaller scale problem, just in case someone wants to accuse me of hating the US.
While none of that makes what is happening in China right, I think we need to be honest with ourselves. We aren't willing to do anything about most of it, or the many other crimes against humanity going on around the world. So stop using it as a stick to beat our rivals with and be honest about
Re:It will probably work, too. Chinese slavers. (Score:5, Informative)
Just to clarify what is otherwise a valid point: Uyghurs are less than 1% of China's population, about 11 million in total. So while stuff you buy from China *may* have been partly made with Uyghur slave labor, it probably isn't.
But what it is *very* likely to have contributed to making something you buy from China is labor from ethnic Han (Chinese) internal migrants. There's 295 million of *them* and their working and living conditions are horrific. They are a permanent, hereditary legal underclass that cannot receive government protections and benefits where they work because of laws from the 1950s intended to keep peasants and their descendents in rural areas growing food. They can't protest or organize to improve working conditions because the Communist Party is supposed to represent workers.
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Xi is sitting on a powder-keg. A heavy recession could lead to riots big enough to overthrow the gov't. China has a revolution roughly every 100 years.
A heavy recession may also result in USA citizens lynching the rich. [politico.com] Even half of Republicans favor taxing the rich more. If we were a true democracy, there'd be enough political might to tax them.
Dictatorships and plutocracies are not so different.
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Re: It will probably work, too. Chinese slavers. (Score:2)
Question what you're told. Go to these places, talk to people and search for any signs of this.
You won't find any, because it's all lies.
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So don't blacklist companies. (Score:3)
Then it doesn't matter if it says 'Big Trusted American Widget Company', if it still says 'made in China'... although even that could be obfuscated through country of origin laundering.
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Yeah.. This ought to be a non-issue. The US-domiciled business has to comply with US law.
That means if the overseas unit is "blacklisted" from selling materials to US-based companies:
because the US-domiciled unit is a US company: that blacklisted entity cannot transfer the same materials
to the US-based business unit, either. The US-domiciled unit would be breaking the law if they accepted the materials.
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As long as you let American investors get a cut off the profit, regulators will look the other way anyway.
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You mean "spin off a subordinate company, who isn't the sanctioned company, but has all the assets you wish to tranfer"?
Yeah, that's like... second year mba crap.
Consolation punishment (Score:5, Funny)
If they can't legally shut them down, then at least force them to change their name to Taiwan Tankman Flattens Pooh, Inc.
Re:Consolation punishment (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ha ha! After being burned enough, is there way they could start checking to see if it's yet another trollin-Xi pot so they know to ignore it?
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I learned it from you, Dad (Score:5, Insightful)
"These moves, while legal, irritate regulators who can't enforce laws when it isn't clear who is behind a company. "
Well gosh, maybe if US law didn't permit this sort of thing intentionally so that the wealthy could hide their goods in various company structures it wouldn't be a problem. I'm sure they'll jump right on fixing this!
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Hey! That's our corruption scheme, get your own!
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I used to work for a company that did this. A British company. There was a threat from some Californian government institution that was trying to replicate the British technology. Apparently there is a law that stops state government from competing directly with private companies, but only US private companies, so they created a US subsidiary. Created a couple of jobs in California.
If you can cheat (Score:2, Insightful)
"If you can cheat, then cheat" is a saying in China. Expect the CCP and their puppet companies to do exactly this. China's government is appalling and huge blight on human existence. Shame on the world's free governments for ever starting trade with this communist shit hole in the first place.
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"If you can cheat, then cheat" is a saying in China. Expect the CCP and their puppet companies to do exactly this. China's government is appalling and huge blight on human existence. Shame on the world's free governments for ever starting trade with this communist shit hole in the first place.
A lot of western business leaders, and not just a few politicians, have adapted that same stance from all the years of interaction. Not that they started their corruption by stealing the concept from China. No, we were well on our way to corruption before that. But seeing how the Chinese businesses behave gave our already corrupt folks a nice little, "Shit, look at them!" shove along the path. Not to mention the "gotta compete, and you can't compete if you don't cheat" thing.
Like Motorola, RCA, Westinghouse? (Score:2)
So, the republican lead forced sale of bytedance (Score:2)
Is just going to make our country less safe?
wow.
A simple fix (Score:2)
These moves, while legal, irritate regulators who can't enforce laws when it isn't clear who is behind a company.
Tear down ALL the corporate veils and make the entire ownership and investor chain TOTALLY transparent. The only secrets that corporations should be keeping are related to market strategies, manufacturing processes, and other legitimate intellectual property. People who own and control companies shouldn't be allowed to skulk around behind bullshit legal protections meant to give further advantages to the already over-advantaged.
This is not a new idea... (Score:2)
This is not a new idea...after World War 2, Japan renamed one of its towns in a prefecture "USA" so that they could put labels on products made that stated "Made in the USA."
Yet not surprising, China won't name a corporate front "Evil Bamboo Curtain Corporation" or "Mao's Big Red Book Company" or even "Lo Ki Enterprises"...
JoshK.
The US corporate law system... (Score:2)
Oh come now (Score:2)
Oh no. (Score:2)
How dare these companies (checks notes) set up subsidiaries in another country to get favorable legal and tax treatment.
Thank goodness real American countries like Alphabet a subsidiary of Google Ireland Holdings incorporated in Ireland but domiciled in Bermuda would never do such thing.