COMMENTARY: Limits to American Strategy to Blacklist Chinese AI Companies Coming Into View

If the U.S. blacklisting of China's budding artificial intelligence companies is aimed at thwarting their progress, we already are starting to see the limits to that strategy. A strong signal came this week when Megvii Technology, a Beijing-based AI firm on the U.S. blacklist, made moves to test the IPO waters in Hong Kong. Numerous media reports said the company, known for its facial-recognition platform Face, is seeking to raise $500 million to $1 billion in a listing that is imminent. The move follows the early success of Alibaba's (NYSE: BABA) secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that may raise as much as $13 billion next week. The HKSE was the world's top bourse for IPOs last year, supplanting Nasdaq, and looks primed to win that race again this year despite the civil unrest there. Last month the U.S. Commerce Department added to the list of Chinese AI companies banned from buying U.S. products or importing American technology.