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China Vows Retaliation after US Blacklists Companies

Flags of US and China are displayed at American International Chamber of Commerce (AICC)'s booth during China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, China, May 28, 2019. (Reuters)
Flags of US and China are displayed at American International Chamber of Commerce (AICC)'s booth during China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, China, May 28, 2019. (Reuters)
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China Vows Retaliation after US Blacklists Companies

Flags of US and China are displayed at American International Chamber of Commerce (AICC)'s booth during China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, China, May 28, 2019. (Reuters)
Flags of US and China are displayed at American International Chamber of Commerce (AICC)'s booth during China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, China, May 28, 2019. (Reuters)

China on Sunday said it will take “necessary measures” to respond to the US blacklisting of Chinese companies over their alleged role in abuses of Uyghur people and other Muslim ethnic minorities.

The Commerce Ministry said the US move constituted an “unreasonable suppression of Chinese enterprises and a serious breach of international economic and trade rules,” reported the Associated Press.

China will “take necessary measures to firmly safeguard Chinese companies’ legitimate rights and interests,” the ministry's statement said.

No details were given, but China has denied allegations of arbitrary detention and forced labor in the far western region of Xinjiang and increasingly responded to sanctions against companies and officials with its own bans on visas and financial links.

The US Commerce Department said in a statement Friday that the electronics and technology firms and other businesses helped enable “Beijing’s campaign of repression, mass detention and high-technology surveillance” against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

The penalties prohibit Americans from selling equipment or other goods to the firms. The United States has stepped up financial and trade penalties over China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, along with its crackdown on democracy in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong.

The Chinese government since 2017 has detained a million or more people in Xinjiang. Critics accuse China of operating forced labor camps and carrying out torture and coerced sterilization as it allegedly seeks to assimilate Muslim ethnic minority groups.

The US Commerce Department said 14 companies were added to its Entity List over their dealings in Xinjiang, and another five for aiding China's armed forces.

“The Department of Commerce remains firmly committed to taking strong, decisive action to target entities that are enabling human rights abuses in Xinjiang or that use US technology to fuel China’s destabilizing military modernization efforts," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement posted on the department's website.

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Spain, Portugal Hunt for Cause of Power Outage as Electricity Returns 

People sit in candlelight and use mobile phone flashlights in the dark during a nationwide power outage at Plaza Mayor square in Madrid, Spain, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
People sit in candlelight and use mobile phone flashlights in the dark during a nationwide power outage at Plaza Mayor square in Madrid, Spain, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
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Spain, Portugal Hunt for Cause of Power Outage as Electricity Returns 

People sit in candlelight and use mobile phone flashlights in the dark during a nationwide power outage at Plaza Mayor square in Madrid, Spain, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
People sit in candlelight and use mobile phone flashlights in the dark during a nationwide power outage at Plaza Mayor square in Madrid, Spain, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)

Electricity had been restored to most of Spain and Portugal early on Tuesday after huge nationwide blackouts, although authorities were still trying to find out what caused the sudden outage. 

In Spain, schools and offices reopened, public transport restarted after long delays, traffic gridlock eased and many hospitals had recovered power while others continued to operate on generators. 

Spain's electricity grid operator Red Electrica said it was able to supply virtually all of the country's electricity demand on Tuesday morning, while Portugal's equivalent, REN, said that by late on Monday it had all 89 power substations in the country back up and running. 

The authorities are now being pressed for an explanation of what caused one of the biggest power outages ever seen in Europe. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday night the country had suffered a precipitous loss of 15GW of electricity generation in five seconds at around midday, equivalent to 60% of national demand. 

The grid instability caused the Spanish and French electricity interconnection through the Pyrenees mountains to split, resulting in a general collapse of the Spanish system, Red Electrica's chief of operations Eduardo Prieto told reporters on Monday evening. Some areas in France suffered brief outages on Monday. 

Spain is one of Europe's biggest producers of renewable energy, but Monday's shutdown has already sparked debate about whether the volatility of supply from solar or wind has made its power systems more vulnerable to such an outage. 

John Kemp, an energy analyst and public policy specialist, said finding clear root causes for the sequence of failures that contributed to the blackout could take investigators several months. 

"The region has one of the world’s highest penetrations of renewable generation from wind and solar so the blackout will be a case study of how renewable generators impact on reliability as well as restarting after widespread failure," he said. 

In Portugal, the government said hospitals were back up and running, airports were operational albeit with hangover delays in Lisbon, while the capital's metro was restarting operations and trains were running. 

Marc Ferracci, the French Industry Minister, told RTL radio station on Tuesday that France was better prepared to prevent blackouts such as the one suffered by Spain and Portugal and that the impact in France had been “minimal”. 

COUNTING COSTS 

Madrid's authorities put on free buses to get people to work on Tuesday and the metro and some trains started to operate, although with delays. 

Overnight, rail travelers were stranded in some of Spain's main hubs, as all trains were cancelled. In Madrid, some were forced to bed down overnight in the station or in the nearby Movistar Arena concert venue. 

A state of emergency was declared across many Spanish regions on Monday, with the deployment of 30,000 police. In Atocha station in Madrid, police and Red Cross workers handed out blankets and bottles of water. 

In Barcelona on Tuesday morning, restaurant owners counted the cost of lost produce after half a day of their fridges and freezers being off. 

Maria Luisa Pinol, 63, owner of an establishment in the city, told Reuters late on Monday that she had been forced to temporarily close her doors. 

"It’s impossible to serve food," she said. "(We’re) scared it will go bad, that we have to throw away everything away. We don’t know if the insurance will cover it, and, that's an economic loss besides other things too."