Beijing is taking U.S. sanctions head-on with its latest round of restrictions targeting U.S.-based firms that gather open source data about business links to Xinjiang.

Why it matters: The sanctions expand on Beijing's previous efforts to criminalize certain kinds of research, intimidate individual researchers, and make it harder for companies to comply with U.S. sanctions against China. The escalating sanctions fight between the U.S. and China risks forcing companies to choose between the world's largest markets.

The latest restrictions "speak volumes about how China will seek to use its sanctions authorities in the future," Alex Zerden, founder of Capitol Peak Strategies and a former U.S. Treasury official, told Axios.

Driving the news: On Tuesday, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced new sanctions against U.S. data analytics firm Kharon, the firm's director of investigations Edmund Xu, and Nicole Morgret, a Xinjiang-focused researcher who previously worked for the nonprofit data analytics and investigations firm Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS).