WASHINGTON (AP) — The Chinese tech giant Alibaba has sued the U.S. Department of Defense, demanding that it be removed from the Pentagon’s list of Chinese military companies that prohibits them from landing U.S. defense contracts and carries reputational damage.In the petition filed this week in the San Jose division of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Alibaba, which is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, argued that the designation, announced on June 8, has “no basis in fact or law” and that the Pentagon failed to reach its conclusion through any fair process. It is the latest lawsuit by a Chinese company against the Pentagon over such national security labels. In 2021, with some in Washington seeing China as a growing military threat, Congress asked the department to create a list of Chinese companies directly controlled by the Chinese military and security forces, as well as those it believed had contributed to the country’s defense industrial base.
The current list includes 188 entities ranging from state-owned defense businesses, to private-sector tech companies like Alibaba and the robotics company Unitree. The designations have drawn protests from both the Chinese government and some of the targeted companies.
