Tech war: Beijing’s cybersecurity review into US memory chip maker Micron opens opportunity for Chinese suppliers to fill gap in market

A possible ban on Micron products in China is expected to see Yangtze Memory Technologies Co and other mainland suppliers fill any void in the market

The local inventory of memory products has not been affected by Beijing’s Micron review owing to an abundant supply from alternative mainland sources

Reading Time:3 minutes

US memory chip maker Micron Technology is the first foreign semiconductor company to be put under a cybersecurity review by China. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 10:00pm, 27 Apr 2023Updated: 11:43pm, 27 Apr 2023

China’s cybersecurity review into Micron Technology, the United States’ largest memory chip maker, has opened an opportunity for mainland suppliers, led by Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC), to plug any potential gap in the market, according to local analysts and merchants.

With heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing expected to affect the mainland businesses of South Korean memory chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, a possible ban on the sale of Micron products in China could enable YMTC and other local suppliers to fill the void left by the US firm in the market, according to Chen Jia, a researcher at Renmin University of China in Beijing.

“In the memory chip sector, China has basically solved the bottleneck problem,” Chen said.

Some merchants at Pacific Digital Plaza, one of the largest computer shopping centres in Shanghai and a major hub for sourcing electronic components, recently expressed a similar view.

Pacific Digital Plaza, located in downtown Shanghai, is one of the city’s largest sourcing hubs for electronic components. Photo: Ann Cao

At a small kiosk that sells a wide range of electronic components on the first floor of Pacific Digital Plaza, 30-year-old vendor Liu Bei said “Samsung is still the best choice” when buying a solid-state drive (SSD) – a storage device that typically uses a flash memory chip.