US adds Alibaba, BYD and other Chinese tech champions to military company blacklist

The Pentagon has designated Alibaba, BYD, Baidu and more than a dozen other prominent Chinese companies as “Chinese military companies” operating in the United States, widening a blacklist that has become an increasingly effective tool in Washington’s campaign to restrict China’s access to American capital, technology and government contracts.

In a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication on Wednesday, the US Defence Department said the Under Secretary of Defence for Acquisition and Sustainment had determined that the companies met the requirements for designation under Section 1260H of the 2021 National Defence Authorisation Act, which requires the Pentagon to identify Chinese companies it says operate directly or indirectly in the US and support China’s military-civil fusion strategy.

The new list expands the designation beyond traditional defence, surveillance and state-owned industrial groups to include some of China’s most globally recognised private-sector champions, among them e-commerce giant Alibaba, electric-vehicle maker BYD, search and artificial intelligence company Baidu, EV maker Nio, biotech firm WuXi AppTec, solar manufacturers JA Solar and Trina Solar, robot maker Unitree, lidar companies Hesai and RoboSense, and networking equipment maker TP-Link.

Alibaba is the owner of the South China Morning Post.

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The Pentagon also removed 10 entities from the previous version of the list issued in January 2025, including China International Information Services, China National Chemical Engineering, China Traffic Construction USA, two subsidiaries of state-owned energy giant CNOOC, COSCO Shipping Finance, Costar Group, GLARUN Technology and Taiji Computer.