Why Is Alibaba on a Pentagon Blacklist?
Key takeaways
- Get audio access with any FP subscription.
- On the Pentagon’s recently updated list of “Chinese military companies,” several entries seem strangely out of place.
- AVIC has appeared on every version of the list since the first was published in June 2021.
Get audio access with any FP subscription.
On the Pentagon’s recently updated list of “Chinese military companies,” several entries seem strangely out of place. A few lines above the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the state-owned conglomerate that builds the country’s fighter jets, now sits the e-commerce giant Alibaba, for instance.
AVIC has appeared on every version of the list since the first was published in June 2021. Its placement is irrefutable. It is “directly owned and controlled” by China’s state asset regulator. The Pentagon’s two-sentence rationale for why Alibaba is a “military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base” is much flimsier. It is, allegedly, “indirectly affiliated” with that same asset regulator and “affiliated” with China’s technology ministry. The Pentagon cites no military customer, no defense contract, and no specific conduct whatsoever. Alibaba rejected the designation and promised legal action.