BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s video surveillance equipment maker Zhejiang Dahua Technology said that it and its subsidiaries have agreed to terminate or exit five projects they signed with local governments in China’s Xinjiang region, a stock exchange filing showed on Monday.
Some of the projects, awarded between 2016 and 2017, have been terminated in advance, while others were still in operation, Dahua said in a filing to the Shenzhen stock exchange.
The company will cease operating the projects and proceed with asset disposal and debt resolution works, it said. Dahua did not give a reason for the withdrawal.
Dahua’s statement came after another Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer, Hikvision, said earlier this month it had exited contracts with five local governments in Xinjiang. It also did not say at the time why it was pulling out.
The United States added Dahua and seven other tech firms to its trading blacklist in 2019 for allegedly being “implicated” in “repression and high-tech surveillance” against Uyghurs and other members of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
Dahua had said the U.S. decision lacked “any factual basis.” The Chinese government has repeatedly rejected allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and has criticised or targeted companies for removing firms operating in the region from their supply chains.
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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