Congressman John Moolenaar Chairman of the Select Committee on the CCP | Official Website
Chairman John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has written to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, highlighting concerns about Chinese state-subsidized LCD and OLED companies. Moolenaar points to BOE Technology Group and Tianma Microelectronics Co. as significant threats to U.S. economic and national security due to their dominance in global display markets through state subsidies.
Moolenaar underscores the importance of LCD and OLED technologies not only in consumer electronics but also in military weapon systems. He notes that BOE and Tianma have amassed substantial shares of the global display market, posing a supply chain risk for U.S. military operations. Additionally, he reveals that both companies have strong ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) through their parent companies and involvement in military-fusion zones in China.
In his letter, Moolenaar states: “The PRC engages in aggressive state-sponsored subsidization of the two primary display technologies: liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display. By doing so, it drives non-PRC companies from the market and bolsters PRC dominance of the industry. In LCD, the industry’s legacy technology, the PRC’s share of global production capacity has grown from 0% in 2004 to 72% today, and non-PRC manufacturers are rapidly exiting the market due to their inability to compete… A similar evolution is now underway in OLED, the current generation of display technology; the PRC’s share of global production capacity has grown from 1% in 2014 to 51% today.”
He further elaborates: “Most alarmingly, both companies are tied to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and support its efforts. Tianma is identified by the U.S. Department of State as a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC)… BOE was initially founded in 1993 as a military and defense supplier, and it is integrated as at least a subprime contractor for the PLA; many of its customers are known PLA suppliers, such as HiSense.”
Due to these connections with the Chinese military, Moolenaar urges that both BOE and Tianma be placed on the DoD 1260h blacklist as Chinese military companies.
