• US President Joe Biden signed an executive order this week that restricts investments made by US companies in Chinese ones.
• The executive order is reportedly aimed at better controlled US national security.
• The order is set to take effect from next year.

When US President Joe Biden took office in 2020, many thought that the sanctions imposed on Chinese technology companies would erode, but that has not been the case at all. In fact, an executive order signed by the Biden administration this week puts even more restrictions in place.

The executive order puts restrictions on investments made by American organisations in certain types of Chinese technology companies, with national security being cited as the reason for the soon-to-be imposed order.

“Today, President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on Addressing United States Investments In Certain National Security Technologies And Products In Countries Of Concern that authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate certain U.S. investments into countries of concern in entities engaged in activities involving sensitive technologies critical to national security in three sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence,” a press release from the White House explained.

While countries of concern are mentioned, only three are ever mentioned by the Biden administration.

“In an Annex to the E.O., the President identified the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong and the Special Administrative Region of Macau, as a country of concern,” it added.

It looks the executive order is aimed at preventing US entities from investing in technology companies from countries that could potentially use said solutions in future against the United States.

“We are committed to taking narrowly targeted actions to protect our national security while maintaining our longstanding commitment to open investment. This program will seek to prevent foreign countries of concern from exploiting U.S. investment in this narrow set of technologies that are critical to support their development of military, intelligence, surveillance, and cyber-enabled capabilities that risk U.S. national security,” the release continued.

Despite noting that these are narrowly targeted actions, as Engadget points out, this is the latest in a series of measures specifically looking at Chinese technology firms. We have already documented the ongoing tensions between Huawei and the US government around its 5G network and consumer electronics, and in recent months the ByteDance-owned TikTok social media platform has come under fire.

To date, however, tangible evidence of a Chinese company threatening US national security, has yet to surface. Regardless, this latest action will cripple any inroads that a Chinese technology company hopes to make in the US.

If you’re interested in reading the executive order in full, you can do so here.

[Image – Photo by Henry Chen on Unsplash]