Can the U.S. Government Tell Chinese People Apart?
Zheng Wei is a fairly common Chinese name. A tennis player, a movie director, an archaeologist, and multiple Chinese-American academics all share that name. So do an inventor at the consumer drone company DJI and a professor at China’s National University of Defense Technology.
And the U.S. government mixed up the last two people, with serious consequences, according to a recent lawsuit by DJI. The drone manufacturer is suing the U.S. Department of Defense for designating DJI as an arm of the Chinese military, and argues that the name mix-up is an example of the Pentagon’s sloppy reasoning when imposing economic sanctions.
The Department of Defense designated DJI a “Chinese military company” in 2022, part of a broader protectionist offensive against the drone company. DJI, which is a privately-owned company based in Shenzhen, China, claims that it was unable to figure out why it had been blacklisted. Only after DJI’s lawyers announced their intention to sue, the lawsuit says, did the Pentagon provide a report backing up its designation.
The report drew several alleged connections between DJI and Chinese military research institutions, including the fact that Zheng Wei was both an inventor listed on a DJI patent and a professor at the National University of Defense Technology. But DJI provided a sworn declaration by its own Zheng Wei stating that he and the professor are different people.
Similarly, the Pentagon claimed that DJI software engineer Zhang Tao was listed on a patent for a temperature-sensing device designed by China’s Military Science Academy. Again, DJI provided a declaration from its own Zhang Tao stating that he is not the same person as the Military Science Academy’s Zhang Tao.
“Having employees with common Chinese names is not a basis for listing” someone as a Chinese military company, the lawsuit states, with a footnote linking to an article about anti-Asian racism.
The Pentagon also claimed that the Military Science Academy’s invention demonstrated DJI’s military links because the military scientists had used a rangefinder sold by DJI to build their device.
“DJI has no control over whether a research university purchases and uses an off-the-shelf DJI product—let alone a product sold by its affiliate—in the development of a patent application,” the lawsuit states. “Moreover, DJI products have been frequently used by researchers, including those from the U.S. Air Force. [The Department of Defense’s] logic would lead to the conclusion that DJI is also an ‘American military company.'”
U.S. sanctions enforcement is a sprawling, Kafka-esque process. Executive agencies can blacklist people or companies with no notice, no right to see the (often thin or specious) evidence, and no chance to appeal. A $31 million lobbying industry has grown around keeping wealthy foreigners off of U.S.
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