Chinese artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime said Monday it will press ahead with its Hong Kong listing, a week after it was blacklisted by the United States over accusations of genocide in Xinjiang. An initial listing earlier this month was pulled when the US Treasury announced new sanctions, saying SenseTime's facial recognition programmes were designed in part to be used against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. On Monday, the company filed a revised listing with the Hong Kong stock exchange with trading expected to start December 30. "Due to the dynamic and evolving nature of the relevant US regulations, we have required to exclude US investors," the company wrote. Bloomberg News reported that SenseTime had secured about $512 million from nine cornerstone investors, including state-backed Mixed-Ownership Reform Fund and Shanghai Xuhui Capital Investment Company. The company is still planning to hit the pre-blacklisting $767 million target with 1.5 billion shares at HK$3.85 to HK$3.99 per share.

WASHINGTON/BEIJING – The Trump administration on Tuesday slapped travel bans on Chinese officials involved in a massive crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in its west. The State Department said it would not issue visas to Chinese government and Communist Party officials believed to be responsible for or complicit in mass detentions and abuses in Xinjiang province. It did not identify the officials or say how many were affected by the ban, which can also be applied to their immediate family members. U.S. lawmakers have specifically asked for action against Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party chief for Xinjiang and a member of the party's powerful Politburo, and U.S. officials have previously mentioned him when saying the Trump administration was considering sanctions against officials linked to China's crackdown on Muslims. Chen earlier led iron-fisted policies aimed at crushing dissent in Tibet and has gained a reputation within the party for his handling of minority groups.

The US has added 28 Chinese organisations to the Entity List for their suspected involvement in human rights and privacy violations against Muslim minority groups, particularly the Uyghur. As a result, the action will prohibit trade between the 28 entities and US companies. The Department of Commerce has not specified reasons for blacklisting the organisations, apart from ruling that they were "acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States". Among the trade-blocked companies are Hikvision and Dahua Technology, two of the world's largest video surveillance suppliers and manufacturers that have been implicated in AI surveillance operations and data collection against Muslim minorities. The Department of Commerce's report stated: "Specifically, these entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the XUAR [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]."

The US has banned 28 Chinese organisations, including eight technology corporations that specialise in video surveillance, facial recognition and artificial intelligence over human rights concerns. The firms were blacklisted over allegations of "implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance" against Muslim minority groups.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said China has persecuted minorities on a massive scale. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley accused China of persecuting religious and ethnic minorities on a massive scale Monday in her first public remarks since announcing she would leave office last week. "It is the largest internment of civilians in the world today," Haley said in keynote remarks at the Chiefs of Defense Conference Dinner in Washington. "It may be the largest since World War II." The former South Carolina governor was particularly critical of Beijing's crackdown on Uighur and other Muslim minorities in China's northwest, which she described as being "straight out of George Orwell."