US equipment manufacturer Flextronics, which seized part of Huawei’s property in China, is likely to be put on China’s unreliable entity list because the practice violated domestic laws, Chinese analysts told the Global Times.
Flextronics privately detained materials and equipment belonging to Huawei worth more than RMB 700 million ($102 million) for more than one month after the Trump administration put the Chinese company on a blacklist in May. After Huawei was placed on the US Entity List on May 16, which bars US companies from selling products and services to it without permission, Flextronics, halted its cooperation with the Chinese company in the global markets.
If Huawei signed a contract with Flextronics’ company registered in Zhuhai, China, the use of US domestic laws to detain Huawei’s materials in China at the very least constituted a violation of the territorial jurisdiction of Chinese laws and a problem of default, said Huo Zhengxin, a professor at the School of International Law of the China University of Political Science and Law.
China’s unreliable entity list is in the process of being finalized, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce.