A House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy and Regulatory Affairs hearing focused on the need for more domestic mining of critical minerals, but administration witnesses noted that imports -- and subsidizing processing of domestically mined minerals -- are just as essential to uninterrupted supply.
Exports to China
Republican leaders of the House Financial Services Committee urged Congress this week to exclude a measure from the upcoming 2024 defense spending bill that could lead to new guardrails around U.S. outbound investments into China. They said existing sanctions and export control measures are sufficient to target Chinese military and technology companies, and any new investment restrictions would only limit American “control, influence, and intelligence gathering” in China.
The Biden administration should investigate all Chinese lidar technology companies to determine whether they should be placed on the Entity List or made subject to U.S. investment restrictions, the House Select Committee on China said in a letter this week. The lawmakers said lidar, or light detection and ranging, is being used in autonomous systems and robotics but isn’t subject to export controls, potentially allowing a loophole for Chinese companies to acquire U.S. technologies for use in lidar systems that can aid the country’s military.
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Gary Locke, former U.S. commerce secretary and ambassador to China, has joined Dorsey & Whitney as a senior advisor in the Seattle office, the firm announced. Locke currently chairs Committee of 100, a "leading organization for Chinese Ameircans," and will help guide Dorsey's international practice, the firm said. Locke has a background in foreign direct investment, export controls, government relations and "cross-cultural diplomacy," the firm said.
An academic and journalists from England and Foreign Policy magazine agreed that President Joe Biden got more out of the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping than Xi did.
Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba is nixing plans to spin off its cloud computing division due to “uncertainties” caused by recently updated U.S. chip export controls on China. Alibaba was planning to publicly list its Cloud Intelligence Group, a cloud computing services business, but said last week it fears “these new restrictions may materially and adversely affect” the cloud computing division’s “ability to offer products and services and to perform under existing contracts.”
Officials from the U.S. and China will meet in January to hold “technical discussions” on ways to better protect trade secrets, the Commerce Department said in a readout of a meeting last week between Secretary Gina Raimondo and Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao. Commerce said the two countries will bring together “subject matter experts” to talk about “strengthening the protection of trade secrets and confidential business information during administrative licensing proceedings."
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week removed a Chinese scientific institute from the Entity List that the agency had originally added in 2020 for ties to human rights abuses in Xinjiang (see 2005220058). The move, outlined in a final rule effective Nov. 16, removed the Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science of China from the list.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is working to convince more countries to place export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment destined to China, but the agency couldn’t afford to delay its most recent chip controls as other nations mulled them over, said Thea Kendler, BIS assistant secretary for export administration. While the agency prefers to implement its chip controls and other restrictions alongside allies, “we will not hesitate to act unilaterally to protect U.S. national security,” Kendler said.