Beijing has criticized Washington for adding several Chinese companies to a list of entities allegedly supporting China's military, urging the United States to "correct its erroneous practices".

On Monday, the US Defense Department added several major Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Baidu and BYD, to the list, according to US media.

Responding at a daily news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, "China has consistently and firmly opposed the US overstretching the concept of national security and formulating various types of discriminatory lists to go after Chinese businesses.

"We urge the US to correct its erroneous practices and stop its unwarranted suppression of Chinese enterprises," Lin said.

China will take necessary measures to firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, he added.

According to leading IT news portal TechCrunch, the list — known as the 1260H list, after the specific section of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that created it — "is just one tool that the US has used to place restrictions on Chinese tech".

The updated list, which supersedes an earlier 2025 version, now includes a broad swathe of China's top technology companies, according to Reuters.

It also reported that other companies added include biotech enterprise WuXi AppTec, artificial intelligence-driven robotics company RoboSense Technology Co and Unitree, a leading Chinese maker of humanoid and quadruped robots.

Baidu said in a statement to Tech-Crunch that "the suggestion that Baidu is a military company is entirely baseless. We will not hesitate to use all options available to us to have the company removed from the list".

Alibaba told TechCrunch that it "is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy", adding that it will take all available legal action against attempts to misrepresent the company.

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn