The United States' latest addition of more than 40 Chinese entities to a so-called "forced-labor" blacklist amounts to economic coercion dressed up as law enforcement, officials and experts said, warning that such unilateral sanctions risk destabilizing global industrial and supply chains.
Coming just one day after lead economic and trade officials from both sides held talks on stabilizing bilateral ties, the move — the largest single expansion of the list — can only heighten tensions between the world's two largest economies, they added.
"The US action is groundless, as Washington has continued to use so-called 'human rights' and 'forced labor' as pretexts for arbitrarily imposing unilateral sanctions on Chinese companies under its domestic laws," a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday.
The US Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday the addition of 43 Chinese companies to the entity list under the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The law, which took effect in June 2022, effectively bars goods linked to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region from entering the US market, in the name of combating so-called "forced labor".
Spanning industries from metals and electronics to apparel, cotton and food processing, the newly listed companies include capacitor manufacturer Hunan Aihua Group, snack food producer ChaCha Food and cotton supplier and processor Henan Tongzhou Cotton Industry Co, according to a US government notice.
