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China The Military

Pentagon Cited Alibaba on China Military Aid in Oct. 7 Letter (yahoo.com) 32

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Pentagon concluded that Alibaba Group, Baidu and BYD should be added to a list of companies that aid the Chinese military, according to a letter to Congress sent roughly three weeks before Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to a broad trade truce.

Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg informed lawmakers of the conclusion in the Oct. 7 letter, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News, to the heads of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. It wasn't clear whether the companies have been formally included in the the Pentagon's so-called 1260H list, which carries no direct legal repercussions but serves as a major warning to US investors.

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Pentagon Cited Alibaba on China Military Aid in Oct. 7 Letter

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    Chinese company named after a Moselm thief. I can't wait to given them my credit card #.
    • Chinese company named after a Moselm thief. I can't wait to given them my credit card #.

      Just got an Aliexpress order a couple days ago. It was easier on my credit card than the same thing from Amazon.

    • Re: Alibaba (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @03:14PM (#65819863) Homepage Journal

      I buy from AliExpress all the time. (Same business, different storefront.) As a rule they are roughly as responsive as Amazon. Shipping takes longer but prices are much better. Pretty much all the cheap crap on Amazon comes from them and it's much cheaper from the source. So far they have processed all of my complaints gracefully.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I regularly buy from AliExpress. Their customer service isn't as good as Amazon's, but the prices are 1/10th of the Amazon ones so even though the odd things gets lost or is of poor quality, I'm still well up on what Amazon would have cost me.

        Occasionally I need to do a credit card chargeback. Had to do that on a computer case that got damaged. For small stuff costing literal pennies I don't bother with the maybe 1 in 20 items that is lost or no good.

        As you say, it's the same stuff they sell with a hefty ma

        • Well, I'm about to find out if I need to do my first chargeback, I have a delayed response on a return authorization for where I was sent the wrong item. They advertised a different version. This might be confusing for them since the difference is small - yet critical. But there really should be no confusion because they advertised the other version both in the images and the product name/listing title.

          • In case anyone is going this far down the hole, it turned out great. Even though the item was shipped from the US, because the seller didn't respond I got a refund without having to return it.

            So far Aliexpress has been responsive to 100% of my issues and I only have needed to be a little patient and not expect everything to be solved immediately or arrive immediately.

  • by sit1963nz ( 934837 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @02:52PM (#65819793)
    I regularly buy bits and pieces from them, sure some is crap, but a LOT of it is good quality.
    There are LOTS of countries where firms are suppliers to the military, including the USA.

    So glass houses/stones/etc.
  • It isn't really new information that the largest corporations in China are either directly involved with the Chinese government or implicitly involved with the Chinese government and if you are intertwined with the Chinese government then you are with their military, this separation that we are used to in the US simply doesn't and has never existed over there.

    This is how it has always been and it's by design, it's a Loki's wager of private/public systems. This is feeling even more performative and desperat

  • The courier lost an item I ordered on Alibaba.

    Alibaba say I have to contact the courier for compensation.

    The courier's customer service bot says only the sender can ask for compensation and cuts off the chat.

    Alibaba have screwed me.
    • The courier lost an item I ordered on Alibaba

      I always use my most customer-friendly credit card to order from AliExpress, just in case I need to dispute. Only happened once, shitty fly-by-night courier lost the package, I got the runaround, played a round or two of phone tag then just disputed the charge. Lo and behold the package got delivered a few days later. Overall, with dozens of orders, I've been pretty satisfied with their customer service, I've had a couple lost packages and they immediately refunded or reshipped.

      Amazon is better about thi

    • That's weird...it sounds like the courier screwed you, not alibaba.

      • Well, the courier points out that Alibaba is their customer not me, so any compensation claim has to be done by Alibaba.
  • File this under the "NO SHIT" department.

    Do you think the US Military is buying random shit on Amazon? Of course they are! It may even be at the individual person level, but its totally still a thing.

    Alibaba is Chinese Amazon. Yes, they buy products.

    Oh, okay, what about the OTHER stuff Alibaba does?

    Yes, they're also Chinese AWS. Do you think the military uses cloud computers? Of fucking course they do.

  • What a surprise, China has a government that has a finger in every pie.
    It's perfectly legitimate to want to embargo them, but pretending to "discover" that the communists run the country is an insult to the voter.

    • The information contained in the article seems like they are saying the sky is blue or water is wet. The US isn't much different other than being less transparent about the role of govt in a oligarchy. Control in the US is via ownership of companies or positions in govt. China is unclear as to the exact structure but probably similar to the US with just different names and perception. One could argue the election system in the US is what sets us apart, but a counterargument to that would be the outnumbering

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