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Asia Pacific|China Slaps Sanctions on 13 U.S. Defense Firms
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/world/asia/china-us-sanctions-defense.html
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The largely symbolic move is in response to the Biden administration’s latest arms sales to Taiwan, the island democracy that China considers its own.
Dec. 5, 2024, 5:18 a.m. ET
China imposed sanctions on more than a dozen U.S. defense firms and several American defense industry executives on Thursday in retaliation for the Biden administration’s latest batch of arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by Beijing.
China’s Foreign Ministry said Washington’s approval last month of a $387 million defense package for Taiwan, which included spare parts for fighter jets, had “seriously damaged China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
China named 13 American firms in its action on Thursday, including the drone makers RapidFlight and BRINC Drones. Six executives were also sanctioned, including Barbara Borgonovi, president of Naval Power at Raytheon, and Blake Resnick, the founder and chief executive of BRINC Drones.
In announcing the sanctions, Beijing invoked its recently established Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, which is part of an expanding assortment of countermeasures mirroring many of the punitive actions that the United States takes against China.
China last imposed sanctions on U.S. defense firms in response to arms sales to Taiwan in September.
The moves, which forbid the companies from doing business in China and the executives from traveling there, typically have little practical effect, because U.S. companies that make armaments are already largely barred from doing business in China by U.S.-imposed restrictions.
