China extends reconciliation gesture to US Micron again... "Welcome development in China"

Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson Briefing
"Maintaining a High Level of External Openness"

As the leaders of the United States and China met again after a year and reached some agreements including the resumption of military talks, the Chinese government sent another message of reconciliation to the semiconductor company Micron, which had imposed 'counter-sanctions' in response to U.S. sanctions.

On the 16th, He Yadong, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, said at a briefing, in response to a question about whether there had been any changes to the previous demand to stop purchasing products when Wang Wentao, Minister of Commerce, visited the Micron booth during the recent Shanghai Import Expo, "We welcome foreign-invested enterprises including Micron to continue to take root in the Chinese market and achieve better development on the premise of complying with Chinese laws and regulations."

The largest memory semiconductor manufacturer in the United States, Micron Technology [Image source=Yonhap News]

Spokesperson He stated, "The scope of the measures taken by relevant Chinese departments regarding the purchase of Micron’s related products, which pose significant safety risks according to the law, is clear," adding, "This pertains to the domain of critical domestic information infrastructure." He further emphasized, "We are aware that Micron has expressed its intention to continue expanding investment in China," and "China remains steadfast in maintaining a high level of openness to the outside world, continuously improving the investment environment for foreign enterprises, and providing service guarantees to foreign-invested companies."

Earlier, China announced in May that "serious security issues were found in Micron products, which failed to pass security reviews," and stated that "operators of critical information infrastructure must stop purchasing Micron products in accordance with the law." Micron earned a quarter of its revenue from China last year.

In this context, on the 1st, Wang Wentao met with Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, and sent a message of reconciliation by promising to improve the investment environment and provide services. On that day, spokesperson He added to Minister Wang’s 'kind words' by clarifying that the purchase restrictions apply to "products with significant safety risks" and the "critical information infrastructure domain." This has been interpreted as indicating that Chinese companies trading Micron products outside this scope would not face issues.

Regarding the recent U.S.-China summit, spokesperson He said, "It provided direction for the development of China-U.S. relations and China-U.S. economic and trade relations," and "During this Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) period, Minister Wang Wentao and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo will hold another meeting to discuss the implementation of the important common understandings from the leaders’ summit and to resolve key issues in bilateral economic and trade relations."

He expressed dissatisfaction over the European Union’s recent sampling process in its anti-subsidy investigation of Chinese electric vehicles, where, contrary to usual practice, only three Chinese companies were selected. He stated, "The European Commission did not apply the 'maximum export volume' criterion and selected only three mainland Chinese companies as sample enterprises, excluding EU member state companies with top sales volumes," adding, "The sampling criteria did not follow regulations, and the related methods may violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and EU laws. This will seriously distort the results of the subsidy investigation."

He added, "Despite clear opposition from the EU industry, the European Commission initiated the anti-subsidy investigation and arbitrarily claimed that Chinese electric vehicle companies cause losses and threats to the EU electric vehicle industry," further stating, "This completely ignores the close cooperative relationship between the Chinese and EU automotive industries."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.