The trend of the United States “blocking” (joining the entity list) Chinese technology companies has intensified.

The Notorious Entity List is the toughest of the various blacklists in the United States. Once a company is included in the Entity List, it will be subject to strict export controls, and imports of technologies and products (even only a small part) involving the United States will be subject to the permission of the US Department of Commerce. Because enterprises feel a serious threat from the United States, the United States uses such a method to avoid as much as possible its acquisition of any trace of American key technologies and components to prevent its continued development.

Since the release of the entity list system in 1997, a total of about 1,700 entities have been included in the entity list, including more than 400 entities in China. Although the proportion is not that high, the included companies can be said to be a top list. China’s top technology companies, mainly in the fields of communications, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. The more famous companies include Huawei, SMIC, Megvii, Hikvision and other companies. These companies have more or less been affected in their operations after being added to the Entity List, and some companies that rely heavily on American technology have even suffered catastrophe.

On the evening of the 16th local time in the United States, the U.S. Department of Commerce once again announced that 34 entities from China will be added to the entity list. Among them, Chinese communication companies are the hardest hit areas.

However, apart from the two major telecom giants Huawei and ZTE (which have been added to the Entity List), many Chinese telecom companies that have been added to the list one after another are relatively unfamiliar to non-industry insiders. So why is the United States afraid of these low-key big Where’s the guy?

As long as you check the information of these companies a little, you can find that they are mainly concentrated in the field of optical fiber and cable .

so-called fiber optic cable is a communication cable that uses the principle of total reflection of light to use optical fiber as a transmission medium and uses optical communication to achieve high-speed information transmission. Due to the low delay, large capacity and gradually reduced cost of optical fiber communication, it has become the core link of various mainstream communication methods such as 4 5G mobile communication and marine communication. With the vigorous development of China’s mobile Internet industry, the construction of optical cables as an infrastructure is in full swing. Up to now, China has the world’s largest optical cable mileage – more than 45 million kilometers.

But what the Chinese people are even more proud of is that in the list of the top 10 most competitive companies in the global optical fiber and cable field in 2020, the names of 4 Chinese companies appeared. They are YOFC, Hengtong Optoelectronics, Fortis Group and FiberHome . In communications , the market shares of the four companies have reached 9%, 8%, 7%, and 6% respectively, and the share of optical cables produced by Chinese companies has accounted for about 50% of the world. China’s optical fiber and cable army has been able to compete with other developed countries on the list: Corning of the United States, Prysmian of Italy, Furukawa Electric of Japan, OFS, Sumitomo Electric, and Fujikura, and they are not inferior in technology.

As a result, China’s optical fiber and cable companies are regarded as thorns in the eyes of the United States, and two of the four giants, Hengtong Optoelectronics and FiberHome Communications, have been added to the list of entities.

As for why the other two have not been affected, judging from the “preference” of the United States for Chinese optical fiber and cable companies, the companies that have been blocked are mainly concentrated in a subdivision of optical fiber and cable – the submarine optical cable field.

The principle of the submarine optical cable has been completely reflected by its name: unlike the optical cable buried deep in the ground, the submarine optical cable is an optical cable laid on the seabed wrapped with an insulating sheath. Since sea water can prevent the interference of external electromagnetic waves, the signal-to-noise ratio of the submarine cable Higher, better communication delay and quality, very suitable for long-distance transoceanic communication.

Therefore, the submarine optical cable has become one of the important infrastructures in the global information and communication field. It has a very strategic position and can be regarded as the central nerve of the global information and communication network.

Although satellite communication giants such as SpaceX have been clamoring to replace submarine optical cable communication with satellite communication methods such as Starlink, due to the high cost of satellite communication and poor bandwidth, more than 95% of international data communication in the world is still carried out through submarine cables.

As early as 1850, the world’s first submarine cable was laid between the United Kingdom and France to realize the cross-sea transmission of telegraphs. It was not until 1993 that China’s first submarine optical cable was officially opened between China and Japan, which was long overdue.

So far, China still lags far behind developed countries in the field of submarine optical cables. Due to the extremely scarce nature of submarine optical cable resources, there are only about 400 submarine optical cables in the world, with a total length of about 1.2 million kilometers, and Google alone has 14 submarine cables, and continues to invest in the construction of submarine optical cables.

In contrast, data from 2018 shows that the number of submarine optical cables owned by China is far lower than that of developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and Britain, and even less than that of Singapore and Google.

However, with the collective efforts of China’s optical fiber and cable companies, China is catching up in the field of submarine optical cables. At present, China’s main submarine optical cable suppliers are Zhongtian Technology, Hengtong Optoelectronics, Dongfang Cable, Fiberhome Communications, Huawei Marine, etc. These Chinese communication companies continue to catch up in the field of submarine optical cables. At present, they have the strength to compete with the three giants in the field of submarine cables: Japan’s NEC, France’s Alcatel-Lucent, and the United States’ SubCom (the three giants share about 90%), and they have built overseas. Extensive undersea fiber optic cable infrastructure.

In the ranking of the world’s top ten most valuable and top ten most powerful telecom infrastructure brands released by the British brand evaluation agency Brand Finance, the most authoritative list in the telecom industry, Zhongtian Technology and Hengtong Optoelectronics both entered the top ten. Cisco, Nokia, Qualcomm, Ericsson , Corning and other brands keep pace with each other, which is enough to show its global influence.

Of course, the United States does not want to see China’s rise in such an important field of information infrastructure.

Therefore, on the one hand, the United States continues to obstruct the construction of China’s submarine optical cable. Stranded; for example, in the middle of last year, the US government allowed Google to start the Pacific high-speed Internet optical cable connecting Los Angeles and Taiwan, China, but required that the optical cable not be connected to Hong Kong, China on the grounds of “national security risks”.

On the other hand, the United States took up the big stick of sanctions and waved it brutally. Zhongtian Technology, Hengtong Optoelectronics, Fiberhome Communications, and Huawei Ocean acquired by Hengtong have all been added to the entity list.

Fortunately, China’s optical fiber and cable industry as a whole is not highly dependent on the technology of overseas countries. After being added to the list of entities, Chinese optical fiber and cable companies have not experienced a situation of business collapse. Companies that have already been listed have even seen stock prices continue to rise after being included in the list. Compared with the continuous stock price limit drop after domestic communication companies were added to the Entity List a few years ago, it is enough to show that Chinese technology companies have slowly adapted to the inevitable outcome of being added to the Entity List when they are good enough. For many Chinese technology companies, the role of “certification” sometimes outweighs the negative impact.