‘Enough Is Enough, We Are Not Going To Take It Anymore’: US Goes All Out To Combat Chinese Economic Espionage

The US Justice Department on Thursday charged a Chinese state-owned firm Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co and its Taiwan partner United Microelectronics Corp for allegedly stealing trade secrets from the US.’s largest memory-chip maker, Micron Technology Inc, Wall Street Journal has reported.

The trade secrets are valued at about $8.75 billion.

Idaho-based Micron estimated to be worth $100 billion, controls about 20 to 25 per cent of the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) industry, a technology not possessed by the Chinese until very recently.

As per the Justice Department, a former Micron employee in Taiwan joined United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) in 2015 and also recruited two others to join him. Three of them are alleged to have connived to bring Micron’s trade secrets with them. Later UMC partnered with Jinhua, where they developed the same technology. All the three Taiwanese have been charged.

Trump administration has been vigorously pursuing a series of steps to combat what it describes as Chinese economic and technology espionage. Earlier this week, the US Commerce Department said it has blacklisted Jinhua from buying American components because it posed a considerable risk to national security.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions launched a scathing attack on China for violating the terms of a bilateral agreement reached with the Obama administration under which both governments agreed not to support cyber attacks to steal corporate secrets from one another.

“Chinese economic espionage against the United States has been increasing – and it has been increasing rapidly,” Sessions said. “Enough is enough. We’re not going to take it any more.”

The US has been upscaling its efforts to prevent China from stealing its cutting-edge technologies including restricted visas for Chinese students in the related fields, stepping up export controls of US technology companies and tightening scrutiny of Chinese investments.