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Chinese tech giant Alibaba has sued the Pentagon to get off a list of companies the Defense Department says are tied to the Chinese military.

Getting into it: Alibaba filed the complaint Tuesday in federal court in San Jose, California, after the Pentagon added it this month to its so-called 1260H list, which now identifies 188 Chinese firms, up from 134 last year. The Defense Department branded Alibaba a “military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base” because of its affiliation with China’s technology ministry, MIIT.

Alibaba rejected the label outright, calling the determinations baseless. “Alibaba is governed by an independent board, none of whom has any military affiliation,” the company said, adding that its products are built “for retail, logistics, and enterprise information technology, not weapons, defense, or intelligence.”

Starting June 30, the Pentagon is barred from doing business with blacklisted firms, and from 2027 it cannot buy their products through third parties either. Alibaba says the rule also forces its longtime US lobbyists and lawyers to cut ties or risk their own defense contracts, which it says effectively silences the company in Washington just as it tries to fight back.

Alibaba called the move arbitrary and capricious and said it learned of the designation by reading the Federal Register, with no fair hearing despite months of engagement. It warned the label has caused irreparable harm, arguing that for many American businesses it is “the principal gateway to the Chinese market” and that branding it a military company casts a shadow over every US relationship it holds.

China’s embassy slammed the designations as “discriminatory,” and Alibaba joins earlier firms like Xiaomi that successfully sued their way off the list.

This all comes as the Pentagon swept up other major Chinese names this month, including Baidu, BYD and Nio, several of which are weighing their own challenges, with biotech firm WuXi AppTec already suing.