China asks US to stop 'unreasonable suppression' of Huawei
China's foreign ministry said on Saturday the United States
needed to stop the "unreasonable suppression" of Chinese companies
like Huawei, and a Chinese newspaper said the government was ready to retaliate
against Washington.
The Trump administration on Friday moved to block global
chip supplies to blacklisted telecoms equipment company Huawei Technologies,
spurring fears of Chinese retaliation and hammering shares of US producers of
chipmaking equipment.
China will firmly defend its companies' legal rights, the
foreign ministry said in a statement in response to Reuters' questions on
whether Beijing would take retaliatory measures against the US.
China's Global Times newspaper on Saturday quoted a source
close to the Chinese government as saying that Beijing was ready to take a
series of countermeasures against the US, such as putting US companies on an
"unreliable entity list" and imposing restrictions on US companies
such as Apple Inc, Cisco Systems Inc and Qualcomm Inc.
The newspaper, published by the People's Daily, the official
newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, said the source also mentioned
halting the purchase of Boeing Co aeroplanes.
"China will take forceful countermeasures to protect
its own legitimate rights" if the US moves forward with the plan to change
rules and bar essential suppliers of chips, including Taiwan-based TSMC, from
selling chips to Huawei, the Global Times quoted the source as saying.
Tensions between the world's two largest economies have
spiked in recent weeks, with officials on both sides suggesting a hard-won deal
that defused a bitter 18-month trade war could be abandoned months after it was
signed in January.
In addition to the move on Huawei, the US Federal Retirement
Thrift Investment Board, which oversees billions in federal retirement dollars,
this week also said it would indefinitely delay plans to invest in some Chinese
companies that are under scrutiny in Washington.
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