The contradictions of the Chinese policy of the United States, umpteenth act. On the one hand, US President Donald Trump wants to ban the Chinese social network Tik Tok in the United States and “make Beijing pay” for what he sees as its role in the spread of Covid-19 around the world. On the other hand, his administration has loaned hundreds of millions of dollars since March to companies in the United States owned by large Chinese groups or in which these companies have significant stakes, revealed a study published on Sunday 2 August by Horizon Advisory, an American consultancy firm specializing in Sino-American relations.

In all, more than 125 US-based companies with strong financial ties to Beijing have received between $ 200 million and nearly $ 500 million in US assistance to SMEs to overcome the coronavirus pandemic. These loans were granted because the program of protection of SMEs (Paycheck Protection Program - PPP), instituted in March, "allows American subsidiaries and branches of foreign entities to make requests for financial support", underlines the New York Times.

Loans of over $ 1 million

And Chinese groups jumped at the chance. "At least 32 companies in the United States owned by a company in China have applied for and obtained loans exceeding one million dollars," said analysts at Horizon Advisory who peeled the data relating to the PPP made public by the American administration in June. This is much more than the average amount of advances made under this program, which is around $ 90,000.

This emergency aid fund, endowed with $ 660 billion, aims to limit layoffs in the United States during the health crisis. In this sense, the money loaned to companies owned by Chinese groups "has probably helped to save jobs in the United States", admit the authors of the study. But they accuse them of having siphoned off the resources of a program, which these Chinese entities did not necessarily need, to the detriment of other American SMEs. “These conglomerates, often public or linked to Chinese power, could probably easily have had access to financing in China to safeguard their activities on American soil”, assure these analysts. 

But above all, these loans have repeatedly benefited Chinese companies that are in Washington's sights. The American subsidiary of the very controversial Chinese biotech group BGI - accused of creating a genetic database of the population in the Xinjiang region (where the Chinese Muslim minority of the Uyghurs resides) - thus received between 350,000 dollars and one million dollars. dollars. The loan was finally repaid after its existence was revealed by the Axios site in mid-July.

The same is not true for the money loaned to Baebies Inc, a start-up specializing in prenatal screening, which received between one and two million dollars under the PPP. The main investor in this young North Carolina startup is BOE, a Chinese giant of connected objects, suspected of actively profiting from the forced labor of Uyghurs. 

Companies linked to the Chinese army

More than three million dollars have also been loaned to American companies which depend directly or indirectly on Chinese groups suspected of being too close to the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Generations that put the US executive in a delicate position: on the one hand, the White House is doing everything to isolate the electronics giant Huawei, accused of working for the Chinese military, and on the other the United States advance millions of dollars to US branches of entities the Defense Department also considers subordinate to the PLA.

The most significant loans noted by Horizon Advisory - between 5 and 10 million dollars - have been granted to companies operating in the pharmaceutical, electric cars or information technology sectors. "The United States indirectly funded, in each of these cases, conglomerates that the Trump administration regularly accuses of intellectual property theft," notes the New York Times. 

The picture portrayed by this study gives the impression that the SME assistance program “weakens, for lack of rigorous control of loans granted, one of Donald Trump's political priorities: to slow down Chinese efforts to reach a technological level. of the United States ”, underlines the Project of Government Oversight, an American NGO which fights against corruption and fraud in the American administration.

Washington is aware of the current limitations of PPP. Republican senators have, in particular, proposed to exclude American SMEs owned by Chinese groups from this program. But that would mean doom, potentially, hundreds of additional jobs in the United States. It is not sure that this is a risk that Donald Trump will agree to take a few months before the next presidential election.

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