China says list of 'unreliable' foreign firms coming soon

China's Commerce Ministry will release a list of "unreliable" foreign companies in the near future, a spokesman said Thursday, without giving a specific date.

The decision to create the list, announced last week, is widely seen as a response to a US decision to put Huawei Technologies on a blacklist for alleged theft of intellectual property and evasion of Iran sanctions.

Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng told reporters at a weekly briefing that the process of drawing up the list was underway. He said no particular company or industry is being targeted.

"Companies that abide by Chinese laws and contractual spirit totally needn't worry," he said.

The US Department of Commerce has issued an order that U.S. companies will have to seek government approval for sales to Huawei once its own list takes effect after a 90-day grace period.

China hasn't said what action it would take against the entities included on its list. Gao said China does not want a trade war but is not afraid of one.

"If the US keeps escalating trade frictions," he said, "China will follow to the end." Huawei, once a little-known supplier of telecoms network gear and now the industry leader, has become a national champion as Beijing fights back against US claims that the company poses a security risk and should be excluded from development of super-fast next-generation 5G networks.

Huawei has denied it might be forced to spy on behalf of China's ruling Communist Party and demanded that the US and other governments produce evidence to back up their allegations.

Chinese President Xi Jinping highlighted the Chinese government's strong support for the company, based in southern China's Shenzhen, by presiding over a signing ceremony in Moscow on Wednesday of a deal between Huawei and Russian telecom company MTS.

The deal calls for MTS and Huawei to jointly develop 5G networks in Russia, MTS said in a statement.

Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin also attended a launch ceremony for a Chinese car factory in Russia's Tula region. The two leaders signed their names on a Great Wall Motors Haval F7 sedan and Putin hailed the venture as evidence of increasingly close business ties between the former rivals.

Huawei's chairman, Guo Ping, noted that with 16,000 5G-related patents, the company leads in the technology.

In Beijing, the Commerce Ministry issued a report Thursday emphasizing that China and the US have both benefited from their trade ties, despite China's huge surpluses.

"The argument that the US suffered losses doesn't hold ground," it reads in part. "China is an important export market to the US, and US exports to China have created a great deal of employment for the U.S. ... There is not necessarily a connection between the trade deficit and the economy and employment."