(BFM Bourse) – The Chinese start-up specializing in artificial intelligence and accused of collaborating with Beijing in the repression of the Uyghur community took its first steps on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday.
The action of Chinese artificial intelligence specialist SenseTime was up sharply Thursday on the first day of its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, despite its inclusion on the American blacklist. In the early morning, the title SenseTime gained more than 23% to 4.74 Hong Kong dollars. The company raised 5.78 billion Hong Kong dollars (650 million euros) by listing 1.5 billion securities at 3.85 Hong Kong dollars each, the lower end of the set price range for its debut. If it erased a good part of its gains thereafter, the title still ends its first trading session on an increase of 7.3% to 4.13 dollars.
According to financial news agency Bloomberg, SenseTime previously secured $ 512 million (€ 454 million) with nine institutional investors, including the Chinese state-owned Mixed-Ownership Reform Fund.
The company was blacklisted in early December by the US Treasury, which accuses it of having developed technology to specifically identify members of the Uyghur ethnic group in China. SenseTime, which had castigated “unfounded accusations” and complained of being “caught in the midst of geopolitical tensions”, then postponed its initial public offering scheduled for December 17.
Crackdown on Uyghurs
Blacklisting makes it virtually impossible to purchase securities of companies listed therein by banks or US nationals. The US Treasury accuses SenseTime of being able to identify Uyghurs, including those who wear “beards, sunglasses or a mask”, using its technology, in order to serve as police surveillance in Xinjiang. This region of northwestern China, which has long been hit by attacks attributed to separatists or Uyghur Islamists, has been the subject of draconian police surveillance for several years. Mainly Muslim, the Uyghurs are the main ethnic group in Xinjiang.
Western studies, based on interpretations of official Chinese documents, testimonies of alleged victims and statistical extrapolations accuse the Chinese authorities of repression against the Uyghurs. These reports accuse Beijing of having arbitrarily interned in “camps” a million people, of having recourse to “forced sterilizations” and “forced labor”. The United States accuses China of “genocide”. In 2019, Washington had already placed SenseTime on the Commerce Department’s blacklist, prohibiting Americans from selling technology to it.
(with AFP)
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