FCC Votes Unanimously to Expand Ban on Chinese Tech
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted unanimously Friday to expand its ban on Chinese-technology-company sales and imports, citing national-security concerns.
The vote places additional restrictions on telecommunication companies including Huawei and ZTE, as well as security camera manufacturers Hytera and Zhejiang Dahua Technology. The companies will be prohibited from exporting new products into the United States, though stops short of demanding of recalling existing Chinese technology used by American firms today.
“The FCC is committed to protecting our national security by ensuring that untrustworthy communications equipment is not authorized for use within our borders, and we are continuing that work here. . . . These new rules are an important part of our ongoing actions to protect the American people from national security threats involving telecommunications,” FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel noted in a statement.
A spokesperson for Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, one of the embargoed companies named by the FCC, stated that such attempts will do nothing to protect American national security. However, it “will do a great deal to make it more harmful and more expensive for U.S. small businesses, local authorities, school districts, and individual consumers,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
The announcement comes barely a month after Axios learned that the FCC was contemplating banning all sales of Huawei and ZTE equipment in America due to “national security concerns.” The latest move expands the FCC ban to ten Chinese companies and marks a further escalation in the economic competition between America and China.
Four FCC commissioners, two Democratic and two Republicans, voted in favor of the motion signaling an emerging bipartisan consensus on the question of China. Following China’s perceived mishandling of Covid-19 through suppressing information of its origin, a majority of Americans across the political divide, now hold unfavorable views of the country.
“This is a culminating action . . . . Things that began under Trump are now being carried out. The Biden administration is continuing to turn the screws on these companies because the threat isn’t changing,” Klon Kitchen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Bloomberg.
