měi guó美国yì yuán议员yāo qiú要求tǐ yù体育gōng sī公司shuō míng说明yǔ与ā lǐ bā bā阿里巴巴de的hé zuò合作
The chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee on China recently wrote to a sports company, asking it to explain its partnership with Chinese tech company Alibaba and suggesting that it end the cooperation.
The company owns the Washington Wizards basketball team and the Washington Capitals hockey team, and it also manages an arena.
The partnership includes event sponsorship and the use of Alipay at the arena.
The U.S. Department of Defense believes Alibaba has ties to the Chinese military, and that its cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies may support military development, so it has placed Alibaba on its list of “Chinese military companies.”
Alibaba disagrees with this claim and has filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court, asking to be removed from the list.
The committee asked the sports company to provide the contract and other cooperation materials between the two sides by July 15.
So far, the company has not made any public response.