U.S. bars investment in Chinese AI giant and bans exports to chip maker

U.S. officials plan to ban American investment in the Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group Inc. and are looking to block U.S. exports to China’s largest chip maker. The efforts come as the Biden administration imposes sweeping human rights sanctions on China.

SenseTime is a leading AI and facial recognition technology company. On Friday, the Treasury Department will place it on a blacklist of Chinese companies that support China’s military. The move will bar Americans from investing in the company.

According to the Treasury, SenseTime develops facial recognition programs that determine a target’s ethnicity and particularly focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs. The Chinese Communist Party has carried out countless human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other minority groups in China’s Xinjiang region.

U.S. officials will also discuss a proposal to block Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) from buying critical U.S. technology. SMIC continues to use U.S. components despite having limited access to exports since the Commerce Department included it on the entity list, which identifies foreign parties that are prohibited from purchasing certain items, a year ago.

The sanctions coincide with Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy, which aims to bolster democracy around the world, and International Human Rights Day.

“On International Human Rights Day, Treasury is using its tools to expose and hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights abuse,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wall Adeyemo said in a statement. “Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression.”

The U.S. is also considering adding other Chinese companies to the Commerce Department’s entity list and banning American investment in them.