US govt proposes expanding ban on Chinese tech equipment

New Delhi, April 4 (IANS) United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed ban of the import of telecommunications and surveillance equipment of select Chinese companies deemed national security risks.

FCC had already in 2022 decided to halt approvals of new models into the United States' from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua and now a complete ban including previously authorized devices still allowed into the US market is being proposed, a report from Channel News Asia (CNA) said.

Public comment as to the extension of the ban has been sought, as the FCC informed its finding that prohibiting continued importation and marketing of such equipment is “necessary to protect national security by mitigating risks to the U.S. communications sector.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington and Hikvision did not immediately comment, the report said adding, already?purchased devices would remain usable, but the agency could bar the importation immediately after the order gets finalised "to avoid a rush to import new devices".

The proposal comes after a slew of FCC actions targeting Chinese technology, including bans on new models of drones in December and consumer routers last week.

In October, the FCC decided to block new approvals for devices with parts from companies on its Covered List and let the agency ban previously approved equipment in select instances.

Hikvision had filed a lawsuit in December challenging that FCC decision, citing authority overreach and sought “to retroactively curtain lawful authorizations without a sufficient legal or evidentiary basis".

A US appeals court in February rejected a bid by Hikvision to lift the 2022 FCC ban on approvals of its new video surveillance and telecommunications equipment.

In March, United States-based artificial intelligence firm Anthropic accused three Chinese unicorns— DeepSeek, Minimax and Moonshot AI — of having illegally extracted capabilities from its Claude model to advance their own systems.

—IANS