From the FB page of:
A US JUDGE YESTERDAY temporarily overturned a ban on a Chinese biotech firm because the Pentagon made a basic math error.
US Department of War staff thought that if a military entity invested five per cent of its cash in a company, it owned five per cent of that company.
(This is like saying that if a poor man spends 90 per cent of his paltry savings on Apple Inc, he owns 90 per cent of Apple Inc.)
“This is flat-out wrong,” US District Chief Judge James Boasberg said.
He wrote a judgement saying that “the percentage of a fund invested in a company is not the percentage of the company the fund owns”.
.
SCARLET LETTER
The judge likened the case to a classic American novel, The Scarlet Letter, in which a young single mother is forced her to wear a red letter ‘A’ (for “adulteress”) at all times. The badge makes her shunned and friendless.
He began his 35-page judgment with the words: “A scarlet letter sends a clear message: keep away.”
This likens the Chinese biotech scientists to the novel’s protagonist and the Pentagon to the cruel elites of her society, making the firm unfairly shunned.
.
LOST ITS CUSTOMERS
The problem started when the US Department of War added commercial biotech firm WuXi Apptec to its insanely long list of “Chinese military companies”.
This caused huge problems for the WuXi team, whose company had no connections with China’s armed forces.
But because its name was on the list, it instantly lost many of its overseas customers.
Business partners in the US (or elsewhere, but scared of the US) cancelled their contracts.
This was clearly unfair, so WuXi staff took the case to a US court—naming the Department of War and Pete Hegseth, among others, as defendants.
.
TROUBLING ERRORS
Judge James Boasberg looked at the evidence and agreed with the Chinese firm. He yesterday barred the War Department from enforcing its ban while the company’s main lawsuit over the issue proceeds.
Boasberg’s published judgement revealed that the Pentagon provided three pieces of evidence that WuXi was an army company—but all three were questionable under US law, which allows courts “to set aside government actions found to be arbitrary or capricious”.
The math-logic foul-up over the 5.32 per cent “ownership” and other mistakes were troubling.
“These errors do not inspire confidence in the fastidiousness of the agency’s decision-making process,” Judge Boasberg wrote in his judgment.
.
HOPE FOR FAIRNESS
Although this is just one win for a Chinese firm, and a temporary one at that, it has intriguing implications.
A large number of Chinese companies have had their international businesses unfairly damaged or destroyed through being added to dubious lists issued by the US Department of War and/ or US Department of Commerce.
Multinational companies will be thinking: If US judges are willing to listen to the evidence and rule fairly on the law, a huge amount of good could be done.
The use of propagandists like Nutty Vittachi to demonise America is exactly why American money must not be used to enrich companies linked to CCP and /or PLA or their military-industrial complex.
ReplyDeleteThe facts were gleaned from a US court ruling - how was Nury involved
Delete