BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s commerce minister told Micron Technology Inc’s president Beijing would welcome the U.S. semiconductor company deepening its footprint in the Chinese market, signally a further thaw in relations between the world’s top two economies.
In a meeting on Nov. 1, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao told Sanjay Mehrotra, President and CEO of Micron Technology, that China will optimize the environment for foreign investment and provide service guarantees for foreign enterprises, according to a brief statement published on Friday on the commerce ministry’s website.
“We welcome Micron Technology to continue to take root in the Chinese market and achieve better development under the premise of complying with Chinese laws and regulations,” Wang added.
The detente comes just months after China’s cyberspace regulator said Micron had failed a network security review and barred Chinese operators of key infrastructure from buying from the largest U.S. memory chipmaker.
China’s move against Micron was widely seen as retaliation for Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s access to key technology. It came just a day after the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations agreed they would look to “de-risk, not decouple” from China, and as Washington pressured its allies to join it in restricting chip equipment exports to China.
The Wednesday meeting between Wang and Mehrotra is line with a recent thawing in tensions between Washington and Beijing, as officials from both countries work to organise a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Sonali Paul and Lincoln Feast)
