Entity List Additions Tracker: Chinese Companies Added Since 2019, by Sector
The Entity List is the US Commerce Department’s register of foreign companies, institutes and people that need a special license before they can receive items subject to US export rules. It is run by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and it has become the main tool Washington uses to slow China’s progress in chips, supercomputing, AI and surveillance technology.
Since 2019, BIS has added many hundreds of Chinese entries. Some rounds name one famous company. Others list dozens of obscure subsidiaries, research institutes and shell addresses in a single Federal Register notice. This page groups the most important rounds by sector so you can see where the pressure has landed and how it has shifted. It covers additions through mid-2026.
What a listing actually does
A listing does not ban trade outright. It means a supplier needs a BIS license to ship items “subject to the EAR” (the Export Administration Regulations) to that entity, and the listing sets the review policy for those license requests. For most Chinese tech listings the policy is a presumption of denial, which in practice means no.
Three details make a listing bite harder than it first appears:
- Scope can reach EAR99 items. For many Chinese entries the license requirement covers everything subject to the EAR, including ordinary commercial goods.
- Foreign direct product rules (FDPR). Some entries carry a footnote that extends US jurisdiction to foreign-made items built with US technology or tools. Huawei’s footnote is the best known. The plain-English version is in our guide to export control terms chip investors confuse.
- Affiliates. In September 2025 BIS issued the “Affiliates Rule,” extending listing restrictions to any company 50% or more owned by listed parties. It was suspended for a year under the November 2025 US-China trade truce, so ownership-based coverage is on hold rather than gone.
For the full alphabet soup (ECCN, SDN, MEU and the rest) see export control and sanctions acronyms explained.
The major rounds at a glance
| Date | What happened | Notable names | Sector |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 2019 | Huawei and 68 affiliates added | Huawei, HiSilicon | Telecom, chips |
| June 2019 | Supercomputing group added | Sugon, Hygon, Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology | Supercomputing |
| Aug 2019 | 46 more Huawei affiliates; nuclear group added | China General Nuclear Power and units | Telecom, nuclear |
| Oct 2019 | 28 entities over Xinjiang surveillance | Hikvision, Dahua, SenseTime, Megvii, iFlytek, Yitu | Surveillance, AI |
| May 2020 | 33 entities, WMD and Xinjiang grounds | Qihoo 360, CloudMinds, Harbin Institute of Technology, NetPosa, CloudWalk | Universities, AI |
| July 2020 | 11 entities over forced labor | Changji Esquel Textile, Nanchang O-Film, KTK Group | Manufacturing |
| Aug 2020 | 38 Huawei cloud and lab affiliates | Huawei Cloud units in 21 countries | Telecom, cloud |
| Dec 2020 | About 60 Chinese entities | SMIC, DJI | Chips, drones |
| Apr 2021 | 7 supercomputing entities | Phytium, Sunway Microelectronics, national supercomputing centers | Supercomputing |
| June 2021 | 5 Xinjiang solar suppliers | Hoshine Silicon, Xinjiang Daqo, Xinjiang GCL, East Hope | Polysilicon |
| Nov 2021 | Quantum and chip entities | QuantumCTek, Hefei national lab units, New H3C Semiconductor | Quantum, chips |
| Dec 2021 | Military medical research | Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 institutes | Biotech |
| Dec 2022 | 36 entities, chips focus | YMTC, Cambricon, SMEE | Memory, AI chips, litho |
| Feb 2023 | Spy balloon program | CETC 48th Research Institute, Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace | Aerospace |
| Mar 2023 | 28 entities | Inspur Group, Loongson, BGI units | Servers, CPUs, genomics |
| Oct 2023 | GPU designers | Biren Technology, Moore Threads | AI chips |
| Dec 2024 | 140 entities alongside new tool rules | Piotech, SiCarrier, Wingtech, ACM Research’s Shanghai unit | Chip equipment |
| Jan 2025 | AI developers and chip designer | Zhipu AI, Sophgo | AI models, chips |
| Mar 2025 | About 80 entities, China-heavy | Inspur subsidiaries, Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence | Servers, AI |
| Sept 2025 | 32 entities, 23 in China | Firms supplying SMIC-linked fabs | Chip supply chain |
The table is a selection of the rounds that mattered most, not every notice. BIS publishes additions in the Federal Register several times a year, and many rounds mix Chinese entries with Russian, Iranian or third-country addresses.
Telecom: where it started
Huawei was the opening shot. The May 2019 listing cut it off from Google’s Android services, US chips and US software. When that proved leaky (Huawei could still buy chips made abroad), Commerce bolted on FDPR footnotes in May and August 2020 that reached any chip made with US tools. TSMC stopped shipping in September 2020. The full sequence is in our Huawei sanctions timeline.
ZTE predates this period (it was listed in 2016 and later fined), but the Huawei rounds set the template: list the parent, then keep adding affiliates in Belgium, Brazil, Germany and wherever else the group operates.
Chips: from SMIC to the toolmakers
The chip story moves down the supply chain over time.
- 2020: SMIC, China’s largest foundry. Licenses for tools that can make chips at 10nm and below face a presumption of denial.
- 2022: YMTC (memory), Cambricon (AI chips) and SMEE (lithography) go on alongside the October 2022 chip rules.
- 2023: GPU startups Biren and Moore Threads, added the same day as the expanded AI chip controls.
- 2024: The toolmakers themselves. Piotech and SiCarrier, plus a long list of fabs tied to Huawei’s chip network.
- 2025: Sophgo, after a TSMC-made die was found in a Huawei Ascend AI chip, and firms accused of buying equipment for SMIC-linked plants.
The logic is simple. First block China from buying advanced chips, then from making them, then from making the machines that make them. Our US chip export controls timeline covers the rules that ran alongside these listings, and chip node names decoded explains what the nanometer thresholds mean.
Supercomputing and AI
Supercomputers were an early target because they run nuclear and hypersonic simulations. Sugon and Hygon went on in 2019, then Phytium (whose chips were made by TSMC) and the national supercomputing centers in Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi and Zhengzhou in 2021.
The AI era widened the net from hardware to model builders. Inspur, China’s biggest server maker, was listed in 2023 and its subsidiaries in 2025. Zhipu AI became one of the first Chinese foundation model companies on the list in January 2025, and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence followed in March 2025. This is the compute layer of the fight described in our explainer on AI sovereignty.
Surveillance and Xinjiang
The October 2019 round was different in kind. It cited human rights, not military use. Hikvision and Dahua (camera makers), SenseTime, Megvii and Yitu (facial recognition) and iFlytek (voice recognition) were listed for their role in surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Later rounds in 2020 and 2021 added more vision firms, textile makers and the polysilicon producers that supply much of the world’s solar panels.
These listings hit hard on reputation and financing, but they did less to the companies’ domestic business, because cameras and face matching do not depend on cutting-edge US chips the way an AI training cluster does.
Drones, quantum, biotech and aerospace
- Drones. DJI was added in December 2020, then faced separate Pentagon and FCC measures.
- Quantum. QuantumCTek and units of the Hefei national laboratory were added in November 2021, one of the first moves aimed at quantum computing and quantum communication.
- Biotech. The Academy of Military Medical Sciences and its institutes went on in December 2021, and BGI units in 2023 over genetic data collection.
- Aerospace. Six entities tied to the high-altitude balloon program were listed in February 2023, days after a Chinese balloon crossed the continental US.
How to read the pattern
A few things stand out across seven years of listings.
The list keeps chasing workarounds. Each time a listed group routes purchases through a new subsidiary or a trading company, BIS adds the new name. That cat-and-mouse is why the Affiliates Rule was written, and why its suspension matters. It is also why smuggling has become an enforcement priority, covered in chip smuggling explained.
Listings come in bursts tied to bigger rules. The heaviest rounds (December 2022, October 2023, December 2024, March 2025) arrived alongside new technology controls, so the two should be read together.
Allies matter more over time. Tool listings only work if Dutch and Japanese suppliers follow, which is the subject of our explainer on Dutch and Japanese chip export controls.
For the broader picture of how listings fit with tariffs, investment rules and Chinese countermeasures, the anchor page is our complete timeline of US-China technology decoupling. And for China’s side of the ledger, including its own unreliable entity list and mineral export bans, see the critical minerals export controls timeline.