In January, the Department of Defense designated several companies, including CATL, as Chinese military companies.
Lawmakers with the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on May 20 criticized American banks for backing a blacklisted Chinese battery maker, suggesting legislation was needed to explicitly prohibit this.
China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL) went
public on the Hong Kong stock exchange on May 20, and
serving as joint sponsors were Chinese companies China International Capital Corporation and China Securities International, and American companies BofA Securities and J.P. Morgan. Overall coordinators included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and UBS. Joint global coordinators included BNP Paribas and Guotai Junan International.
“After the Pentagon labeled CATL a Chinese military company, Bank of America & JPMorgan still backed its IPO—ignoring government warnings & jeopardizing U.S. security,” the committee said in a
statement on social media. “Congress must strengthen outbound investment rules to stop U.S. capital from aiding our adversaries.”
The lawmakers had previously
called on the banks to withdraw from this IPO, writing directly to the heads of both companies.
This is CATL’s second listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. CATL said the IPO was of 135 million shares, which saw a
12.55 percent price increase upon opening. CATL is the world’s biggest battery maker, supplying EV companies such as Tesla and China’s BYD, but also most major auto companies. According to its May 12 IPO prospectus, its batteries are installed in more than 17 million vehicles worldwide, or a third of the world’s EVs.
“This listing signifies our deeper integration into the global capital markets and marks a new milestone in our mission to drive the global zero-carbon economy,” CATL CEO Robin Zeng
said in a statement.
In January, the Department of Defense
designated several companies, including CATL and Chinese media giant Tencent, as Chinese military companies. Both companies saw share prices take a hit on the same day and had issued statements rejecting the designation.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has urged action against CATL for years, calling on the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to blacklist it.
In 2023, lawmakers warned against the use of CATL batteries at military station Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, after which the Pentagon removed the batteries. In 2024, the committee again urged the Pentagon to blacklist the batterymaker.
The committee has also opposed Ford’s partnership with CATL in Michigan, announced in 2022. The deal saw pauses and reviews amid lawmaker concerns, though Ford is now still on track to license the battery maker’s technology. Earlier this
month, the committee urged a local mayor to retract his support for the partnership.
Battle Creek, Michigan, Mayor Mark Behnke in April asked U.S. representatives from Michigan to support federal funding for the Ford–CATL partnership, and committee chair Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.)
rejected the request.
According to the committee, CATL supports the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) military complex and has ties to slave labor.
In 2024, the committee said an
investigation concluded that CATL and another Chinese battery maker, Gotion, source materials via CCP paramilitary group Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps by use of forced labor. It found that CATL sources components, including electrolytic nickel and lithium-ion anode materials, from sanctioned entities and CCP state-owned enterprises that use
forced labor.
The CCP persecutes Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, and the United States signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021,
prohibiting goods made with forced labor from entering the country.
The committee has also warned that reliance on Chinese materials in U.S. energy infrastructure poses a threat to national security.
The U.S. intelligence community has also identified the Chinese regime as the primary threat to U.S. energy infrastructure, last year
warning that Chinese regime-backed hackers are pre-positioned to disrupt critical infrastructure.
A Reuters
investigation recently found that rogue, Chinese-made communication devices have been found in solar power inverters, which could allow China remote access to grids connected to solar panels via these inverters. Sources recalled an incident last November when Deye-manufactured solar inverters in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Pakistan were disabled remotely from China.
A Denmark solar trade group also recently reported finding unexplained electronic components in imported solar equipment but did not identify the country of origin of the products.
Cybersecurity company
Bitdefender had identified vulnerabilities in Solarman and Deye photovalic plant platforms, warning that some 20 percent of global solar output is “just waiting to be hijacked.”
The United States is poised to impose tariffs on imports of solar products from Southeast Asian nations, as American manufacturers recently won a case in which they argued that Chinese companies were flooding the market with unfairly priced solar products through Southeast Asian factories.
Bank of America declined to comment. JP Morgan did not respond to an inquiry from The Epoch Times by publication time.
Reuters contributed to this report.
