China closes ranks as AI firms join Huawei on US blacklist

The US move to blacklist Chinese artificial intelligence and surveillance companies has met with widespread condemnation in China despite the companies’ claims that the prohibition won’t have long-term effects on their operations.

On October 7, the US Commerce Department placed several high-profile Chinese AI firms and government agencies on the Entity List—effectively blocking them from doing business with American companies without prior approval.

The organizations include Sensetime, the world’s most valuable AI startup, and the speech recognition and natural language processing firm iFlytek, as well as surveillance camera makers Hikivision and Dahua Technology.

Also included are Alibaba-backed Megvii, which recently filed to go public in Hong Kong—the first Chinese AI startup to do so—and its counterpart Yitu.