China sanctions Lockheed Martin over Taiwan arms sales

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has imposed sanctions against some Lockheed Martin Corp subsidiaries and senior executives over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, China's foreign ministry said in a statement.

China will freeze movable, immovable and other kinds of property of Lockheed Martin's senior executives including its chairman James Donald Taiclet, and will bar them from entering the country, the statement on Friday said.

The companies on the sanction list include Lockheed Martin Missile System Integration Lab, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories and Lockheed Martin Ventures, according to the statement.

China has repeatedly called on the U.S., an important international backer and arms supplier for democratically-governed Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory, to stop its arms sales to the island.

Beijing has applied sanctions on U.S. companies including Lockheed Martin on numerous occasions for selling arms to Taiwan.

In September last year, China said it would impose sanctions against Lockheed and Northrop Grumman under China's Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law.

It also placed sanctions against Lockheed and Raytheon in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023 - with the 2022 action the first under China's new anti-foreign sanctions law.

China's wide-ranging law to counter foreign sanctions came into force in 2021 in an apparent move to legalise tit-for-tat retaliation against punitive actions taken against it by foreign countries.

(Reporting by Ella Cao, Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo, Editing by William Maclean and Elaine Hardcastle)