The list, which the South China Morning Post has seen, coincided with reports that lawmakers are considering a ban on members of Congress from meeting lobbyists who represent Chinese companies with alleged links to China’s military – even if the meeting being sought is for an American client.

Turbulent US-China relations in recent years have led to growing concerns in Washington about China’s influence on policymaking. US lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have pushed for more scrutiny into who is lobbying for Chinese companies. They accuse Beijing of using closely connected organisations and business to discreetly advance agendas that threaten US national security.

On Monday, Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Chinese had “gotten very good at hiring lobbyists and even deputising the corporate industry to come up here and lobby for things that are beneficial to the Chinese goals at the expense of this country”.

Rubio also claimed that “every company in China is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party”.

These apprehensions have placed US lobbyists who might represent Chinese companies in the line of fire. A number of bills introduced last year with bipartisan support to tighten foreign lobbying regulations are pending in the US Congress. With related concerns getting more traction in Washington, Tessa Capeloto of the Wiley Rein law firm predicted that the issue would “continue to make headlines” as the US government focuses on reforms.

It is within this environment that some lobbyists and their Chinese clients are parting ways.

Interpreted as free speech protected by America’s Constitution, lobbying is an effort to influence government policies, most often through legislators and members of regulatory agencies. Even foreign governments and companies are allowed to hire lobbyists to advance their interests in the US as long as they publicly disclose the activity.

The Foreign Agent Registration Act (Fara), enacted in 1938, requires persons who engage in political activities that are believed or intended to influence the US government or public about policy or other foreign interests to register with and disclose those activities to the Department of Justice.

Some US lawmakers and government officials argue that lobbyists use exemptions under Fara to secretly work for foreign interests. For example, a person already registered as a lobbyist under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 – which does not apply to state, local, or foreign lobbying efforts – is not required to register as a foreign agent under Fara. Exemptions also include commercial activities and legal representation.

“The public ought to know if someone is using their lobbying disclosure to exempt themselves from registering as a foreign agent,” Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in an email about the Disclosing Foreign Influence in Lobbying Act bill that he sponsored a year ago.

That bill, which the Senate passed, would require lobbyists to identify any link with a foreign government or political party that in any way participates in their lobbying.

Around that time, the Senate also approved the Lobbying Disclosure Improvement Act, which proposed more disclosures regarding foreign lobbying. Both bills were introduced in the House the same month but have not advanced since then.

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who co-sponsored the bill, told the Voice of America earlier this month that lawmakers were close to completing work on lobbying legislation that ensures more transparency.

“The primary focus has been on making sure people register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act … There’s been a lot of problems associated with people not disclosing their lobby contracts with foreign countries,” he said.

Along with Grassley and four other Republicans, Cornyn also introduced the Paid Off Act bill in February 2023. It would require agents to register under Fara if they were making any lobbying efforts on behalf of countries of “particular concern”, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations but no further action has been taken.

Cornyn said the lawmakers had “encountered some dissent but will continue to work because it’s important to understand who is actually lobbying these policymakers”.

Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China, would go further, proposing to “ban federally elected lawmakers, senior-level government appointees, and high-ranking military officers from lobbying as foreign agents after they leave the government”.

In July 2023, Gallagher reintroduced a bill proposing a five-year lobbying ban on former government and congressional officials. After being referred to House committees, the bill has not advanced further.

To some observers, talk about lobbying reform is merely political theatre. Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group, said there was no “enthusiasm” to actually pass these measures and that big multinational corporations continued to lobby against them.

Such corporations, Holman said, work through “secret backchannels” since they “all make use of those exemptions ... especially the LDA exemption, where they can claim it’s just commercial activity or not on behalf of a foreign government, that their lobbyists don’t have to register as foreign agents”.

He claimed that lawmakers understand that such corporations are also their major campaign contributors – and therefore let such reform efforts die quietly.

According to Open Secrets, which tracks campaign finance and lobbying information, the Chinese government spent about US$26 million on US lobbying in 2023, down from more than US$50 million in 2022 and over US$68 million in 2021. Lobbying by Chinese businesses moderately increased from more than US$15 million in both 2021 and 2022 to over US$17 million in 2023.

But for Chinese companies, lobbying is no guarantee of positive outcomes in Washington. ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, raised its lobbying expenditures from US$270,000 in 2019 to more than US$8 million in 2023. Despite that, the company could not stop House passage of a bill on Wednesday that would force it to divest the video-sharing app. That bill now heads to the Senate, and US President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law.

US House overwhelmingly passes bill to force ByteDance to divest TikTok

Experts said that especially in the current Washington climate, lobbying for Chinese companies – either private or state-owned – carries reputational risks.

Lobbying can serve as a “bridge between companies and governments, and allow for a more efficient circulation of information and influence”, said Isaac Stone Fish, chief executive and founder of Strategy Risks, a data and research company that quantifies corporate exposure to China.

But on the negative side, he added, lobbyists can work for “a bad actor, or can improperly influence the government process by acting against national interest and in favour of, say, a pernicious Chinese company”.

Stone Fish said that even the possibility that US lawmakers might shut their doors to lobbying for Chinese companies “might make American lobbying firms, especially the prestigious ones, think twice about publicly working with a problematic Chinese company or a state-owned Chinese company”.

“I think this is the US Congress signalling to businesses that there is a cost to these kinds of relationships,” Stone Fish added.

In February, following the lobbying list’s circulation on the Hill, some major law and lobbying firms dropped some Chinese clients. A spokesperson for Akin Gump confirmed it had ended its representation of Hesai as well as of Xiaomi, a Chinese electronic goods manufacturer.

The spokesperson said Akin had not done any reportable lobbying for Xiaomi in several quarters and thus decided to deregister, but did not say why it had parted with Hesai.

Public disclosure filings show that Hesai hired Akin in August for “outreach and education regarding lidar technology”. The termination was filed on February 16.

In a statement to the Post, Hesai said the “termination with Akin was mutually agreed upon, as our focus has shifted”, without giving more details.

Xiaomi, which does not sell its devices in the US, was removed in 2021 from the Pentagon’s list of companies it alleged had links to the Chinese military. Hesai, which makes so-called lidar sensors for drones, remains on the list.

Huawei ends US lobbying operations after years of fighting ban

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, retained by Hesai in September, also terminated its lobbying on February 20.

According to Open Secrets, Hesai paid around US$150,000 to Brownstein Hyatt and US$240,000 to Akin for lobbying activities in 2023.

Around the same time, the Vogel Group, an international government affairs and consulting firm based in Washington, also deregistered two of its clients on February 21: the Chinese drone maker DJI and biotech company Complete Genomics.

Both DJI and Complete Genomics’ parent, BGI, are on the Defence Department’s blacklist; DJI was added to the list in October 2022, BGI on March 2023.

According to public filings, Vogel was paid around US$300,000 by Complete Genomics and more than US$400,000 by DJI.

The Washington law firm Avoq, retained by DJI in October, also terminated its lobbying engagement with the company on February 22, latest filings show.

The same day, Steptoe, another law firm hired in August by BGI and was paid US$270,000 in the second half of 2023, deregistered it as a client. According to the filings, lobbying issues ranged from the National Defence Authorisation Act to a bill that prohibited contracting with certain biotechnology providers.

In an emailed statement on the terminations and tightening scrutiny, DJI said it was “disheartening to witness public policy discussions swayed by political considerations rather than factual accuracy”.

However, it added that the company remained “committed to actively engaging with lawmakers to dispel any misconceptions about the brand”.

Stone Fish of Strategy Risks noted that it was difficult to be a successful private company in China “without having ties or at least linkages and understandings with the party, which also includes the Chinese military”.

He said that Beijing prefers to exert influence, not through official lobbying, but through unofficial lobbying of what it calls “friends of China”.

He described the process: “Someone, say from a Chinese company or affiliated with a Chinese company, has a casual conversation with someone at a think tank, or at a government office musing about perhaps we should do something a different way.”

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said he was not familiar with legislative proposals to ban lobbying on behalf of Chinese companies but that “as a principle, normal economic and trade cooperation between Chinese and US companies should not be politicised”.

He urged Washington to “abandon ideological prejudice, stop overstretching the concept of national security or suppressing foreign companies and create an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies to invest and operate” in the US.

Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a Washington think tank, said that both Republicans and Democrats were “discussing ways to enhance transparency and ensure that Congressional offices are aware of these connections before engaging with such firms”.

“This isn’t about punishment; it’s about basic due diligence,” he added.