U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Photo credit: Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Marshals for the Office of Public Affairs

In a long statement delivered on China Policy at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, William Barr, the sitting Attorney General of the United States, accused American tech giants of succumbing to pressure from the Chinese ruling party in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Barr cited examples such as Apple removing select apps from the Chinese market and announcing that’ll it transfer some its iCloud data to servers based in China as supposed proof of American tech giants bending over to demands from China, which Barr termed as having “the ultimate ambition” to “raid the United States”. Barr also ventured his criticism to Hollywood Studios by accusing them of censoring movies “to appease the Chinese Communist Party.”

“If what happened in China stayed in China, that would all be bad enough.  But instead of America changing China, China is leveraging its economic power to change America,” an excerpt from Barr’s long statement reads. Generally, Barr, who began a second stint as United States Attorney General in 2019, is directing his criticism at American companies who are supposedly bending over to Chinese demands in a bid to gain access into their market, which is itself a very large one. Among companies that he singled out include Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and movie studio Paramount Pictures. “The CCP has long used public threats of retaliation and barred market access to exert influence,” Barr said.

Barr also accused the Chinese Communist Party of seeking to “infiltrate, censor, or co-opt American academic and research institutions.” Generally, Barr implored American companies to “provide a worthy example for other American companies in resisting the Chinese Communist Party’s corrupt and dictatorial rule.”

Barr’s full statement can be accessed via this link, as published by the United States Department of Justice.