US ‘blockades’ won’t hurt the fundamentals of China’s science and technology development, says MIIT
- The blacklist decision, which immediately drew a rebuke from Beijing, targeted 20 Chinese public security bureaus and eight companies
US efforts to sanction some of China’s biggest and most successful companies in telecommunication and artificial intelligence (AI) will not hurt “the fundamentals” of the country’s science and technology development, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.
MIIT spokesman Huang Libin said on Tuesday that while some industries and exports have seen an impact from a decision by Washington to ban the sale of US technology to some companies, these short-term fluctuations won’t affect the long-term development of Chinese science and technology.
“Facing the hi-tech blockades brought about by the US, we have confidence that China’s science and technology can overcome the difficulties and break the bottleneck to achieve breakthroughs,” Huang told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing.
Technology competition has become the crux of the US-China relationship. In early October, Washington expanded its trade blacklist, or Entity List, to include some of China’s top AI companies, which were accused of helping the ruling Communist Party mistreat Uygur Muslims and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.