Sanctions

Matthew Petti | 10.28.2024 3:13 PM

Zheng Wei is a fairly common Chinese name. A tennis player, a movie director, an archaeologist, and multiple Chinese-American academics all share that name. So do an inventor at the consumer drone company DJI and a professor at China's National University of Defense Technology.

And the U.S. government mixed up the last two people, with serious consequences, according to a recent lawsuit by DJI. The drone manufacturer is suing the U.S. Department of Defense for designating DJI as an arm of the Chinese military, and argues that the name mix-up is an example of the Pentagon's sloppy reasoning when imposing economic sanctions.

The Department of Defense designated DJI a "Chinese military company" in 2022, part of a broader protectionist offensive against the drone company. DJI, which is a privately-owned company based in Shenzhen, China, claims that it was unable to figure out why it had been blacklisted. Only after DJI's lawyers announced their intention to sue, the lawsuit says, did the Pentagon provide a report backing up its designation.

The report drew several alleged connections between DJI and Chinese military research institutions, including the fact that Zheng Wei was both an inventor listed on a DJI patent and a professor at the National University of Defense Technology. But DJI provided a sworn declaration by its own Zheng........

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