On the Pentagon’s recently updated list of “Chinese military companies,” several entries seem strangely out of place. A few lines above the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the state-owned conglomerate that builds the country’s fighter jets, now sits the e-commerce giant Alibaba, for instance. AVIC has appeared on every version of the list since the first was published in June 2021. Its placement is irrefutable. It is “directly owned and controlled” by China’s state asset