China is spending billions of dollars on a major push to make its own microchips, an effort that could bolster its military capabilities as well as its homegrown technology industry.
Those ambitions are starting to be noticed in Washington.
Worries over China’s chip ambitions were the main reason that United States officials blocked the proposed purchase for as much as $2.9 billion of a controlling stake in a unit of the Dutch electronics company Philips by Chinese investors, according to one expert and a second person involved with the deal discussions.
The rare blockage underscores growing concern in Washington about Chinese efforts to acquire the know-how to make the semiconductors that work as the brains of all kinds of sophisticated electronics, including military applications like missile systems.
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