Despite the May meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing, where the United States and China agreed to pursue a “constructive relationship of strategic stability,” strategic competition between the two countries continues to deepen beneath the surface.
The expansion of national security-related measures targeting Chinese firms remains a central feature of this competition. On June 8, the U.S. Department of Defense expanded its Chinese Military Companies (CMC) List to 188 entities, adding 64 Chinese companies identified under Section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The update drew widespread attention not only because of its unprecedented scale, but also because it included several of China’s best-known private companies in China, including Tencent, DJI, Unitree, Alibaba, etc.
The CMC List has become an increasingly visible instrument in Washington’s approach to China, yet it differs fundamentally from tools such as the Entity List or the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List. Inclusion on the CMC List does not prohibit commercial transactions, impose export controls, trigger economic sanctions, or otherwise bar listed firms from the U.S. market. Despite these limited immediate legal consequences, Washington continues to devote growing political attention to expanding the list.
This raises a broader question: Why does Washington continue to expand a list with few direct legal consequences? The answer lies less in the restrictions the CMC List imposes than in its function as a mechanism for classifying Chinese firms through a national security lens.
Expanding the Security Lens
The growing CMC List reflects a broader shift in how Washington approaches strategic competition with China. According to analysts at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the latest expansion should be understood not merely as an update to an existing list, but as part of Washington’s broader effort to address China’s Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy, which seeks to integrate civilian technological innovation with national military development. Consistent with this objective, the U.S. Department of Defense stated that the Section 1260H list is intended to designate entities that directly or indirectly support China’s MCF ecosystem.
As artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, and other dual-use technologies become increasingly central to strategic competition, the line between commercial innovation and military capability has blurred. As the National Bureau of Asian Research argued, for Washington, the challenge is therefore no longer simply identifying companies directly involved in military production, but assessing how civilian technological capabilities may be mobilized to support China’s military modernization under the framework of MCF.
This shift helps explain why the CMC List has continued to expand in recent years, particularly through the addition of prominent private companies whose links to the military may be indirect or contested. The latest expansion reflects less a change in China’s MCF strategy than a broader U.S. understanding of which firms could pose national security risks. Rather than imposing immediate restrictions, the CMC List classifies those risks, shaping how Chinese firms are viewed across the U.S. policy system and providing a shared basis for future policy action.
Indeed, the CMC List is more of a risk assessment than a policy response. As concerns over China’s MCF strategy have intensified, policymakers have increasingly relied on a common framework for identifying and communicating potential security risks across government. The Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) observed that MCF strategy has created new forms of collaboration between civilian firms and the defense sector that “do not fit neatly within the scope of traditional defense contracting.” As a result, for the United States, distinguishing purely commercial firms from those that could contribute to China’s military modernization has become increasingly difficult.
In practice, then, the CMC List functions less as an enforcement tool than as a common framework for determining which Chinese firms warrant closer scrutiny. Instead of requiring each agency to develop its own criteria, it provides a shared starting point for identifying potential MCF Contributors. That common designation reduces coordination costs and allows agencies with different legal authorities to work from the same baseline.
Building the Infrastructure for Future Policy
Once government agencies and market actors begin to rely on the shared categories of risk, classification becomes more than a means of organizing information – it starts to function as part of the infrastructure for future policy action.
The implementation of the BIOSECURE Act offered a glimpse of how this process works. As legal analysts at Goodwin noted, entities placed on the Section 1260H list are expected to be at the front of the line for future designation as “Biotechnology Companies of Concern.” Rather than imposing restrictions itself, the CMC List supplies a common classification that other regulatory regimes can adopt.
Similarly, a series of provisions in successive National Defense Authorization Acts have attached new legal consequences to inclusion on the Section 1260H list. These include restrictions on Department of Defense procurement, limitations affecting lobbying activities, phased prohibitions on certain technology acquisitions, and biotechnology-related contracting rules.
The lobbying restriction provides a particularly revealing example of the practical consequences of inclusion on the CMC List. Today, U.S. lobbying firms are forced to choose between representing companies on the CMC List and maintaining relationships with Department of Defense contractors. As a result, many have reportedly withdrawn from representing listed Chinese firms. Major Washington firms such as Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Mercury Public Affairs reportedly dropped Alibaba and Tencent after the lobbying restrictions took effect.
Although placement on the CMC List does not itself restrict commercial activity, the consequences extend well beyond the legal scope of the rule itself. Once classification becomes embedded in successive regulatory measures, it also generates broader spillover effects, encouraging supply chain adjustments, more cautious investment decisions, and heightened compliance efforts even where no direct legal prohibition exists. Classification increasingly shapes the architecture through which future restrictions are designed and implemented.
From Government to Market Signaling
Even the potential for future regulatory action can influence market behavior. Markets respond to expectations long before governments impose restrictions. Once a company is publicly designated as posing potential national security risks, that designation begins to shape how investors, suppliers, customers, and other business partners assess commercial risk. In this way, classification generates tangible market effects even without formal policy consequences for the Chinese firms on the list.
Rather than waiting for legally binding sanctions, companies may choose to reduce exposure proactively to avoid future compliance, reputational, or commercial risks. This often described as a “chilling effect.” The result is a form of market-driven de-risking, in which private actors respond to the expectation of future regulation rather than to existing legal obligations.
The legal challenges brought by WuXi AppTec and Alibaba against their inclusion on the CMC List pointed to this dynamic. According to WuXi AppTec’s complaint, within 10 days of its designation, numerous customers had expressed concerns about continuing their business relationships. Some declined to award new projects or suspended ongoing clinical-stage collaborations, and one supplier halted shipments while explicitly attributing its decision to the CMC designation. Alibaba similarly alleged that the designation has already damaged its reputation, heightened investor concerns, and prompted business partners to reassess their relationships with the company.
Clearly, when the CMC List is updated, other private firms may adjust their behavior in anticipation of future regulatory and commercial risks – regardless of whether the designation of a particular Chinese company is ultimately found to have a sufficient factual basis. Classification thus becomes a powerful form of market signaling, shaping business behavior even in the absence of direct legal enforcement. Once it begins to influence both government decision-making and market expectations, it also lays the institutional groundwork for future regulatory action.
Implications
The Section 1260H list is more than a mechanism for identifying entities linked to national security concerns. It is now being integrated into broader efforts to structure how technology-related security risks are defined and enforced in China-U.S. competition. This was reflected in recent remarks by House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and House Intelligence Committee member Elise Stefanik, who urged the Pentagon to strictly enforce the new lobbying restrictions. In an open letter to the secretary of defense, they argued that “it is critical that the department’s contractors avoid partnering with firms and lobbyists that simultaneously advance the interests of companies executing the military ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party.”
That said, Chinese companies included on the CMC List can pursue litigation to challenge their designation and related regulatory measures. WuXi AppTec and Alibaba have both initiated legal action. On July 5, a federal judge temporarily suspended the application of the lobbying restrictions in Alibaba’s case while its legal challenge proceeds. Although the ruling is limited in scope and does not address Alibaba’s designation itself, it indicates that such regulatory measures remain subject to judicial review and may, in certain circumstances, be temporarily constrained through court intervention.
This is not without precedent. In 2021, Xiaomi successfully challenged its military-related designation under an earlier U.S. listing regime, illustrating that such determinations are not beyond judicial scrutiny.
However, none of this suggests that litigation offers an easy solution. The experience of companies such as Hesai illustrates that removal from the list does not necessarily preclude the possibility of future redesignation.
As Angela Zhang, a professor of law at the USC Gould School of Law, argued, U.S. restrictions on China are increasingly taking the form of an interconnected regulatory architecture rather than isolated policy instruments. The CMC List illustrates how legal and regulatory frameworks shape not only government action, but also corporate behavior and market decisions. Inclusion on the list may not bring direct sanctions, but it does have consequences.
The upcoming meetings between Trump and Xi, including Xi’s expected visit to Washington in September and a possible meeting at the APEC summit in November, may help preserve high-level channels for managing bilateral tensions. Yet as the expanding CMC List shows, even sustained diplomatic engagement is unlikely to reverse the underlying trajectory of China-U.S. competition.
