US sanctions on Chinese firms over rights abuses are groundless: China
Dec 13, 2021
Beijing [China], December 13 : China on Monday slammed the United States for imposing sanctions on Chinese firms including artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime, over their involvement in the human rights violations in Xinjiang province.
"US sanctions on Chinese entities including AI firm SenseTime, on so-called Xinjiang human rights grounds, are based on lies and disinformation, and interfere in China's internal affairs and undermine China-US relations. China resolutely opposes, condemns it," said Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin, as quoted by Global Times.
This statement comes after Chinese SenseTime Group postponed its USD 767 million Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) on Monday after being placed on a US investment blacklist.
The company said that it remained committed to completing the offering and would publish a supplemental prospectus and an updated listing timetable, American news channel CNBC reported.
Last week, the US had sanctioned four Chinese companies for helping racially profile Uyghurs. The Chinese companies include SenseTime Group Ltd, Moxing Cartoon, Nings Cartoon Studio, and Shanghai Hongman Cartoon.
The artificial intelligence Chinese company SenseTime Group Ltd. was sanctioned for helping racially profile Uyghurs, said the US Treasury Department statement. SenseTime owns or controls, directly or indirectly, a person who operates or has operated in China's surveillance technology sector, it added.
The company's subsidiary, named Shenzhen SenseTime Technology Co. Ltd., has developed facial recognition programs that can determine a target's ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs, US authorities noted.
Early this year, the United States became the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as "genocide". In February, both the Canadian and Dutch parliaments adopted motions recognising the Uyghur crisis as genocide.
The latter became the first parliament in Europe to do so. In April, the United Kingdom also declared China's ongoing crackdown in Xinjiang a "genocide".
