Chinese Firms Involved in Surveillance of Uyghurs Delisted From Wall Street
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On Saturday January 2, the New York Stock Exchange has launched a divestiture procedure for three major Chinese communications companies.
China Telecom, China Mobile Ltd, and China Unicom, all firms closely linked with the Chinese People's Liberation Army and the regime's military industry, were banned from the US stock market. All these firms had also links to Alibaba and other companies, which, according to the reports, were involved in spying and racial profiling of Uyghurs.
These Communist China's issuers are no longer eligible for listing.
The order of US President Donald Trump prohibits any transaction, beginning 9:30 a.m. eastern standard time on January 11, 2021,traded securities, or any securities that are derivative of, or are designed to provide investment exposure to such securities, of any Communist Chinese military company, by any United States person, the officials from the Regulatory Unit of The New York Stock Exchange have informed.
Alibaba, Dahua involved in the secret surveillance of Uyghurs
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China Mobile Communications Group Co Ltd had plans to undertake common projects. In September, a representative of China Mobile has announced a $443 million investment in Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co Ltd. The management of both firms planned to involve foreign investors.
Dahua, China's second-largest surveillance equipment maker, was among Chinese tech firms that the US State Department placed in 2019 on a blacklist of companies said helped Beijing monitor and imprisoned Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
Alibaba was also involved in the racial profiling of Uyghurs as Cloud Service, revealed IPVM the group of tech specialists who assess the threat of video surveillance, making available its data beyond China. In the report titled Alibaba Uyghur Recognition As A Service, the analysts informed that API data guide, a bridge between applications, including website and servers, contained a question whether a user is an Uyghur as a feature of facial characteristics.
Uyghurs are mentioned in the API which detects with 48.7% confidence that a sample face is belongs to this ethnic group, the author of the report stated.
If the system would positively answer this question, a person automatically is perceived as an ethnic Uyghur.
Alibaba Cloud's Content Security website directly includes two API guides for sensitive video facial recognition that can detect whether it is an ethnic minority, the IPVM analysts stated.
The report also warned that similar policies pursued a number of other Chinese firms including Kingsoft, HIKVISION, Megvii, and Huawei.
More than 200 Chinese companies with a total capitalization of more than two trillion dollars are registered on the US stock markets. As relations between Washington and Beijing escalated, many Chinese companies began seeking dual listings in mainland China and Hong Kong.