China imposes sales restrictions on Micron as it escalates tech battle with Washington

China has banned Chinese companies working on key infrastructure projects from buying products from US semiconductor manufacturer Micron, in a major escalation of an ongoing battle between the world’s top two economies over access to crucial technology. The Cyberspace Administration of China announced the decision on Sunday, saying the US chip maker had failed to pass a cybersecurity review.

“The review found that Micron’s products have relatively serious cybersecurity risks, which pose significant security risks to China’s critical information infrastructure supply chain and would affect national security,” the regulator said in a statement.

As a result, operators involved in domestic critical information infrastructure projects should stop purchasing products from Micron, it said. The decision came seven weeks after the Chinese regulator kicked off a cybersecurity review of Micron’s products, in apparent retaliation against sanctions imposed by Washington and its allies on China’s chip sector. Micron Technology (MU) is one of the largest memory chip makers in the United States. It derives more than 10% of its revenue from mainland China.

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