WASHINGTON (CN) — A pair of leading House Republicans implored the Biden administration in a recent letter to investigate a Chinese tech company they said will provide services for a new Ford manufacturing plant in Michigan.
Published Monday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, the letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen — originally dated Jan. 22 — warned the Biden administration that the firm in question had provided tech services to companies affiliated with both the Chinese military and the government of North Korea.
The public version of the letter, penned by committee chair Representative Mike Gallagher and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, redacts the name of the company. The lawmakers identify the firm as a “major subsidiary of a leading Chinese tech company” and say that it provides online marketing, payment and IT services.
According to a committee investigation, Gallagher and Rodgers said, the unnamed company’s IT tools will be used at a future Ford plant that will manufacture batteries for electric vehicles. Those services are being provided as part of the automaker’s partnership with Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Co. Limited, the lawmakers explained.
Based on information reviewed by the committee, the letter said, the tech company in question has provided IT support and online payment services to the Shenyang Jiangshan Picturesque Art Company, which Gallagher and Rodgers said “sells products manufactured by a fully controlled subsidiary of the North Korean government.” Shenyang Jiangshan also cooperates with the North Korean foreign affairs ministry and sanctioned government officials, they added.
Further investigation revealed that the unnamed Chinese company has “concerning ties to the PRC military and other Chinese companies” designated for sanctions by the Treasury Department, the letter said.
The firm has sold millions of dollars in product to Leon Technology Company Limited, a Chinese company that the lawmakers said is involved in the persecution of China’s Uyghur Muslim minority group. Quoting the Treasury’s own analysis, the letter said that Leon Technology “’actively support[s] the biometric surveillance and tracking of ethnic and religious minorities in China,” and that it played a key role in establishing a surveillance system in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
“It is indefensible for Ford to use the same cloud integration and data provider that is linked to North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs sanctions evasion technology,” the lawmakers told Yellen.
The tech firm’s connection to the Chinese government and military entities also poses a cybersecurity risk for Ford’s new factory,” Gallagher and Rodgers argued.
“The same company that is actively supporting the PRC’s surveillance state will have the capability to embed backdoors, spyware and other forms of malware” in the plant’s IT infrastructure, they said.
The lawmakers requested that the Treasury Department investigate whether the unnamed tech company should itself be designated for sanctions based on the committee’s findings. They asked that the agency make such a determination by Feb. 5.
Ford announced in February that it would build its proposed $3.5 billion battery plant in the city of Marshall, Michigan, just west of Detroit. The Contemporary Amperex Technology Company will provide the automaker with technology, equipment and workers for the facility. Ford has said that it expects the new factory to open in 2026.
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