China expresses ‘firm opposition’ to Trump administration sanctions tied to former Google engineer

China slammed the Trump administration’s move to sanction five Chinese companies linked to a former Google engineer accused of intellectual property theft, calling it “egregious.”

The State Department announced the sanctions on Monday, stating the firms are connected to Chinese national Linwei Ding, who was convicted earlier this year of stealing AI-related trade secrets from Google.

The imposition of these sanctions “severely harms the legitimate rights and interests” of Chinese businesses, the country’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement, which was shared by The Associated Press . “The nature of this act is egregious. China firms opposes this.”

The ministry pressed the U.S. to “correct its erroneous practice,” adding Beijing would “take necessary measures,” the news wire added.

Among the sanctioned entities were Shanghai Zhisuan Technology Co., a software platform company founded by Ding, and the China-based venture capital firm MiraclePlus, which the State Department said gave seed capital for Zhisuan. Three other affiliated venture capital firms were also sanctioned.

MiraclePlus released a statement on Tuesday denying it invested in Zhisuan, writing, “We are actively communicating with the relevant parties and hope to lift the sanctions as soon as possible.”

“We believe that there are fair and reasonable processes and systems in place, and that through honest communication, this matter will ultimately be resolved appropriately,” the company added.

Ding was found guilty of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of thefts of trade secrets, after stealing more than 2,000 pages of confidential information from Google.

“The United States has long been a leader in developing emerging technology. This theft of trade secrets is a serious threat to U.S. economic, foreign policy, and national security interests,” State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott wrote in a statement Monday.

According to prosecutors, Ding downloaded the tranche of documents, which contained information about Google’s chips and the software used to connect them to a supercomputer, to his personal computer less than two weeks before he resigned. He then told potential investors he could build an AI supercomputer using Google’s technology.

A federal judge in San Francisco later dropped the espionage charges but sentenced Ding to nearly one year in prison, with two years of supervised release.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.