CHINESE artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime said it will press ahead with its Hong Kong listing today, a week after it was blacklisted by the United States (US) over accusations of genocide in Xinjiang, China.

Its initial listing was pulled when the US Treasury announced new sanctions earlier this month, saying the firm’s facial recognition programmes are designed in part to be used against Uighurs and mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

The company filed a revised listing with the stock exchange in Hong Kong today, with trading expected to start December 30.

“Due to the dynamic and evolving nature of the relevant US regulations, we have required to exclude US investors.”

SenseTime has secured about US$512 million (RM2.16 billion) from nine cornerstone investors, including state-backed Mixed-Ownership Reform Fund and Shanghai Xuhui Capital Investment Company, reported Bloomberg News.

The company is still planning to hit the pre-blacklisting US$767 million target with 1.5 billion shares at HK$3.85 (RM2.09) to HK$3.99 per share.

The US has accused SenseTime of being part of China’s “military-industrial complex” that provides technology for mass surveillance in Xinjiang.

It said the firm has developed and deployed facial recognition software that can determine a person’s ethnicity, including whether someone looks Uighur.

SenseTime refuted the blacklisting, saying that the accusations are unfounded and emphasised that the company is “caught in the middle of geopolitical tension”.

The Treasury sanctions prevent individuals from obtaining visas to the US and targets from doing business with American individuals or entities – effectively locking companies out of the US banking system – and block assets under US jurisdiction.

This makes it all but impossible for US investment banks usually involved in Hong Kong listings to get involved.

The Uighurs’ plight has contributed to worsening diplomatic relations between Western powers and Beijing, and ensnared a growing number of international businesses in tit-for-tat sanctions between the two sides.

United Nations experts and researchers have estimated more than one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in prison camps in Xinjiang.

Human rights groups and foreign governments have found evidence of mass detentions, forced labour and sterilisation, political indoctrination and torture.

Washington has described it as genocide.

After initially denying the existence of the camps, China later defended them as vocational training centres aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism. – AFP, December 20, 2021.