Image: Toby Melville, Reuters

The Trump administration has determined that top Chinese firms, including telecommunications equipment giant Huawei Technologies and video surveillance company Hikvision, are owned or controlled by the Chinese military, laying the groundwork for new US financial sanctions.

The designations were drawn up by the defence department, which was mandated by a 1999 law to compile a list of Chinese military companies operating in the US, including those “owned or controlled” by the People’s Liberation Army that provide commercial services, manufacture, produce or export.

Huawei, China Mobile, China Telecom, AVIC and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for called the allegations “baseless”, noting it was not a “Chinese military company”, and had never participated in any RD work for military applications but would work with the US government to resolve the matter.

The list will also turn a spotlight on US companies’ ties to the Chinese firms as well as their operations in the US

Last week, China threatened retaliation after President Donald Trump signed legislation calling for sanctions over the repression of China’s Uighurs.

The list “is a start, but woefully inadequate to warn the American people about the state-owned and -directed companies that support the Chinese government and Communist Party’s activities threatening US economic and national security,” Republican senator Marco Rubio, who sponsored the Uighur bill, said in a statement.

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