US blacklisted 28 Chinese entities including video surveillance firm Hikvision

10-9-19  On Monday, the US Department of Commerce blacklisted 28 Chinese entities including video surveillance firm Hikvision, citing human rights violations of Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.  Chinese officials said the action interfered with China's sovereignty.    https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/trump-sounding-upbeat-china-latest-trade-talks-191009213223168.html

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  US-China  lower-level talks failed to make progress on key issues, with the Chinese delegation refusing to broach the hot-button issue of forced technology transfers, unnamed sources told the South China Morning Post (SCMP)....Without significant progress Trump is set to increase the tariff rate on $250bn worth of Chinese goods to 30 percent from 25 percent next Tuesday.  https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/trump-sounding-upbeat-china-latest-trade-talks-191009213223168.html

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Xu Li, chief executive officer of SenseTime Group Ltd., is identified by the company's facial recognition system at SenseTime's showroom in Beijing in June 2018. | BLOOMBERG
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  Tang Xiao’ou (Chinese: 湯曉鷗) is the founder of SenseTime, an artificial intelligence (AI) company, and remains a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong with the Department of Information Engineering.^[1]

Tang studied at the University of Science and Technology of China and received a B.S. degree in computer science. He travelled to America and acquired an M.S. degree and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (studied underwater robotics), respectively.  After graduation, he worked at Microsoft Research Asia from 2005 to 2008.^{[2]                   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Xiao%27ou}

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SenseTime, the world’s mostly highly valued AI startup, provided software to the Chinese government for its national surveillance system, including CCTV cameras. It was the first company to join an MIT Intelligence Quest initiative launched last year with the goal of “driv[ing] technological breakthroughs in AI that have the potential to confront some of the world’s greatest challenges.”  https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/09/mit-is-reviewing-its-relationship-with-ai-startup-sensetime-one-of-the-chinese-tech-firms-blacklisted-by-the-u-s/

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  Washington this week targeted Chinese facial recognition startups SenseTime, Megvii and Yitu over national security concerns and foreign policy interests, aggravating the clash between the two economic superpowers over who will dominate the technologies of the future.

  SenseTime is the second-most valuable artificial intelligence startup in the world, with investments from tech giants SoftBank (SFTBF) and Alibaba (BABA) and a private market valuation of $7.5 billion, according to CB Insights.  (The most valuable artificial intelligence startup is another Chinese company, ByteDance, which uses AI to power its popular apps, such as video platform TikTok.)

  Megvii and Yitu are worth $4 billion and $2.4 billion respectively, according to CB Insights.

  The three tech startups, along with a handful of other Chinese firms like AI-driven surveillance camera maker Hikvision and voice recognition firm iFlyTek, are now banned from buying US products or importing American technology.

  The US Commerce Department added them to a trade blacklist this week, saying the companies had been implicated in human rights violations against Uyghurs and other members of Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.  Twenty government and security bureaus in China's Xinjiang region were also included in the ban.   https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/09/tech/hikvision-sensetime-blacklist/index.html

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Formally known as Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co Ltd, the firm is the world’s largest purveyor of video surveillance systems.

It is also a vendor to police agencies in Xinjiang, where a sweeping crackdown on Uighurs has drawn international condemnation…The company, which has a market value of about $42 billion, is 42% owned by Chinese state investors and its two key founders.  It pulls nearly 30% of its 50 billion yuan ($7 billion) annual revenue from overseas…..

John Honovich, founder of surveillance video research company IPVM, said Hikvision and Dahua, another blacklisted company, both use Intel Corp, Nvidia Corp, Ambarella Inc, Western Digital and Seagate Technology as suppliers….

Fresh investment for SenseTime has come from SoftBank Group Corp, a person familiar with the matter said.  Other backers include Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake, and Tiger Global.

The firm has also received funding from e-commerce firms Alibaba and Suning.Com Co Ltd, state-backed fund Sailing Capital and U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc.

SenseTime counts China’s Ministry of Public Security and local heavyweights such as China Mobile, HNA Group and Huawei Technologies as its major clients.

Megvi provides facial recognition and other AI technology to governments and companies including  Huawei.

State-owned China Mobile is iFlytek’s largest shareholder with a 12.85% stake, according to its 2018 annual report.

MIT last year announced a five-year agreement with IFlytek under which the Chinese firm would help underwrite three research projects at the university’s renowned Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

The projects relate to AI in health care, speech recognition, and what CSAIL described in its announcement as creating “more human-like AI”.

A 2016 government procurement announcement named an iFlytek subsidiary as the sole supplier of 25 “voiceprint” collection systems to police in Kashgar, a city in Xinjiang, Reuters reported earlier.  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-blacklist-factbox/factbox-us-adds-eight-chinese-firms-to-trade-blacklist-idUSKBN1WN180 

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology said it is reviewing the university’s relationship with SenseTime, one of eight Chinese tech companies placed on the U.S. Entity List yesterday for their alleged role in human rights abuses against Muslim minority groups in China.https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/09/mit-is-reviewing-its-relationship-with-ai-startup-sensetime-one-of-the-chinese-tech-firms-blacklisted-by-the-u-s/