The US government has added carmaker BYD to a list of Chinese companies that it thinks are a threat to national security, but the Chinese embassy in Washington described the list as discriminatory and said that the companies listed all observed local laws. 

The list was put together by the Pentagon (official known as the US Department of War) and includes e-commerce firm Alibaba, search provider Baidu and carmaker BYD, all firms apparently aiding the Chinese military. 

Presumably the companies are aiding the military with reasonably priced goods and answers to commonly asked queries, but Alibaba and Baidu have both threatened legal action to get themselves taken off the list. 

There are nearly 190 companies on the US list, which is published as a requirement of a 2021 law requiring “public reporting of Chinese military companies operating in the United States.”

The Pentagon hasn’t provided any evidence of the military links, but BYD has been included on the list because of its ‘links’ with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. 

BYD is a huge company in China, with its automotive arm just a slice of the pie. It turned over more than £100bn in revenue in 2025, thanks to strong car sales, but also its mobile handsets, semiconductor and transit subsidiaries. 

This week BYD Auto has outlined its plans to become the world’s largest carmaker within the next five years, starting with a massive £1.8bn investment to establish its flash charging network in Europe. 

It’s also about to open a new factory in Hungary later this year, a build which itself has come under fire for apparent employment rights and environmental infringements that BYD has blamed on subcontractors. 

The production facility is being opened in the European Union in an effort to beat punitive tariffs on Chinese-built cars, and there's another new BYD factory being built in Turkey.