Beijing on Tuesday expressed “firm opposition” to the Trump administration’s sanctions on five Chinese companies connected to a former Google engineer accused of intellectual property theft.
The move “severely harms the legitimate rights and interests” of Chinese businesses, the country’s commerce ministry said in a statement. “The nature of this act is egregious. China firms opposes this.”
The ministry also urged the U.S. to “correct its erroneous practice” and said Beijing would take “necessary measures,” without specifying them.
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It came a day after the U.S. State Department imposed sanctions on five Chinese companies connected to Linwei Ding, who founded Shanghai Zhisuan Technology. The department said he had touted his experience with Google and claimed his company could replicate the American tech giant’s super intelligence infrastructure technology.
The startup incubation program MiraclePlus, which was sanctioned along with Zhisuan, gave seed capital in exchange for an ownership stake in Zhisuan, the State Department said. The other three Chinese entities facing penalties are linked to MiraclePlus.
Zhisuan “has knowingly engaged in, or benefitted from, significant theft of trade secrets of United States persons, which occurred on or after January 5, 2023,” the State Department said.
Ding was charged in 2024 with stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets from Google while secretly working with two companies based in China. In January, he was convicted by a federal jury in San Francisco of several counts of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
A judge later dismissed the economic espionage charges and sentenced him to 12 months in prison. The Justice Department is appealing the dismissal of the economic espionage charges.
China’s commerce ministry said its AI development is “the result of long-term cultivation in basic research, continuous innovation investment, and adherence to independent scientific and technological innovation and open cooperation.”
The country’s achievements have “nothing to do with the so-called ‘stealing of trade secrets,’” the ministry said.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
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