U.S. charges China-controlled company in trade secrets theft

LOS ANGELES — The U.S. charged a governmentcontrolled company in China with stealing trade secrets from an American semiconductor company, the Justice Department said Thursday as it outlined an initiative focused on what officials said was the growing threat of Chinese economic espionage.

The prosecution comes amid heightened trade tensions between China and the U.S. and as the Trump administration raises alarms that Beijing remains intent on stealing technology and inventions.

The case involves trade secrets worth up to $8.75 billion and allegedly stolen from Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc.

The charges name two companies and three Taiwanese defendants.

One of the charged individuals had been president of a company that Micron acquired in 2013 and then went to work for the Taiwan semiconductor company, United Microelectronics Corp.

That man, identified by prosecutors as Chen Zhengkun, recruited his co-defendants to join him at UMC. One, according to the Justice Department, downloaded more than 900 confidential and proprietary Micron files before he left and stored them in ways that he could access them at his new job.

That company partnered with a Chinese-controlled business, Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., to mass-produce technology memory storage products used in electronics.

The technology at issue, known as dynamic random-access memory, is something the Chinese government viewed as a priority because its companies could not develop such advanced capabilities.