When cutting foreign technology companies from Chinese supply chains, Beijing has long chosen to work obliquely or even secretly. Regulators would give executives back-room lectures, weigh them down with excessive red tape or hit them with occasional office raids. Rarely did the government tell a firm outright it was no longer welcome.
But that is what it signaled to Micron Technology in a late-night announcement on Sunday.
The Chinese government barred companies that handle critical information from buying microchips made by the Boise, Idaho-based Micron. The company’s chips, which are used for memory storage in all kinds of electronics, like phones and computers, were deemed to pose “relatively serious cybersecurity problems” by China’s internet watchdog after a review.
Micron said it was “evaluating” the government’s finding and “assessing” what it would do next. Analysts said the company, which has been selling chips in China for years, could find itself cut out…
This article was written by Paul Mozur and John Liu and originally published on www.nytimes.com