Biden Urged to Hit Back at China Over Micron Ban, Rally Allies

Micron Technology is a US producer of computer memory and computer data storage. Photo: Reuters.

US President Jo Biden has been urged to rally allies and hit back at China’s “economic aggression” after Beijing’s effective ban on purchases of Micron Technology memory chips.

China’s cyberspace regulator said on May 21 that Micron had failed its network security review and it would bar operators of key Chinese infrastructure from buying from the company, the latest development in an ongoing dispute over chip technology between Washington and Beijing.

The move came a day after leaders of the G7 industrial democracies agreed to new initiatives to push back against Chinese economic coercion. Micron subsequently predicted a revenue reduction.

Now Michael McCaul, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, have sent a letter to US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urging the administration to take action after China targeted the biggest US memory chip maker.

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McCaul and Gallagher urged Raimondo to work with Japan and South Korea to ensure that companies from those countries “do not take market share lost to the ban and undercut Micron.”

The lawmakers added that China “lashed out with an arbitrary economic embargo against one American company. Now, the United States must ensure that this economic aggression fails.”

The Commerce Department must rally US partners and allies, they said.

“We must quickly work with Japan and South Korea to ensure Japanese and South Korean companies do not undercut Micron by taking its sales that were lost to the PRC’s unjustifiable boycott,” they added, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

Raimondo said on Saturday the United States will not tolerate China’s action and is working closely with allies to address such “economic coercion.”

McCaul and Gallagher said China’s action against Micron “should not deter but should rather invigorate export control actions against PRC companies that may threaten US national security or foreign policy interests,” like Chinese memory chip maker Changxin Memory Technologies.

“Failure to impose a cost upon the PRC for its malign behaviour will only invite further such conduct,” they added.

Reuters with additional editing by Sean O’Meara

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Sean O'Meara

Sean O'Meara is an Editor at Asia Financial. He has been a newspaper man for more than 30 years, working at local, regional and national titles in the UK as a writer, sub-editor, page designer and print editor. A football, cricket and rugby fan, he has a particular interest in sports finance.