The US Presidential election results might be disputed but President Donald Trump is quietly going about his usual business and continuing to land incessant sucker-punches on China. Adding another feather to his long list of policies to limit the extent of Chinese influence in the States, the Donald Trump administration, on Thursday, signed an executive order prohibiting American investors from investing in Chinese companies.
The order prohibits American companies and individuals from owning shares — outright or through investment funds — in companies, the administration says help the advancement of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses,” the President said in the order.
The ban will take effect starting 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 11, 2021, and targets 31 companies identified by the Department of Defense as “Communist Chinese military companies”.
According to media reports, China’s crown jewel Huawei and Hikvision, one of the world’s largest manufacturers and suppliers of video surveillance equipment, are among the blacklisted companies. Few other companies in the first phase of the ban include China Telecom and China Mobile.
The Chinese companies with the blessing of top echelons of the Politburo and funded by American investors routinely engage in Intellectual Theft. Most of the Chinese technology companies are copycats of their American counterparts and theft of American intellectual property.
So China has a Baidu search engine modeled after Google, Alibaba modeled after Amazon, Tencent modeled after Facebook so on and so forth. These companies are dependent on American giants in one or the other way for software innovations or hardware equipment, and could not survive for long without the American support. It’s only a matter of time before the aforementioned companies are also added to the blacklisted companies’ bracket.
As reported by TFI in June, the US Senate had also passed a bill to delist the Chinese companies which were not adhering to the US accounting standards from American stock exchanges, NYSE and NASDAQ—the two stock exchanges with the highest market capitalization in the world. The bill ensured that companies owned by China did not get a listing at American stock exchanges.
While the world is guessing who will be in the White House, come 20th January–the duo of Trump and Pompeo has been quietly going on about their business. As reported by TFI, the United States had only recently revoked the terror tag for the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) which instantly had irked the Politburo of Beijing.
China accuses ETIM, which is entrenched in the Uyghur Muslim-majority province of Xinjiang province, of being responsible for numerous violent attacks in the province and outside, including one at the Forbidden City in Beijing, killing several people. By revoking the ban, the US had sent a message to China that its inhumane treatment of the Uyghur Muslims wouldn’t pass under the radar anymore.
Even if, and that’s a big ‘if’, Biden indeed comes to power after clearing the judicial hurdle, then also his pro-China love would not lead to any fruition as the Trump administration is working overtime to fill all the loopholes in its policies. And if Biden tries and goes back on Trump’s policies then the opposition will have the right combustible fodder to take apart Biden and expose his long suspected love for Beijing.
The move of the Trump administration to ban investment in PLA controlled organizations should be followed by countries around the world and India should also look to take a cue out of Trump’s policies.