By Che Pan and Mrinmay Dey
Aug 28 (Reuters) – China’s top memory chipmaker, ChangXin Memory Technologies, sued the Pentagon on Friday over being placed on a list of companies the United States believes are aiding Beijing’s military.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The company was designated a Chinese military company by the U.S. Defense Department under the Biden administration and was retained on the list by the Trump administration during a June update.
“CXMT is not affiliated with the Chinese military,” the company said in the lawsuit. “CXMT designs, produces, and sells its DRAM chips for civilian and commercial use, not for military use,” the company said.
The company is seeking to overturn the designation and remove the company from a Pentagon list that can trigger government contracting restrictions and reputational damage, a court filing showed.
CXMT is China’s top maker of dynamic random-access memory chips, which are widely used in smartphones, personal computers, servers, artificial intelligence systems and other electronics. CXMT has an ambition to break into the U.S. in the long term.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names the U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy Michael Cadenazzi as defendants. CXMT argues that the Pentagon’s decision was “arbitrary”, lacked evidentiary support and violated its due-process rights. According to the complaint, the Defense Department first designated CXMT as a Chinese military company in January 2025. The company said it spent more than a year providing information to challenge the designation and seeking removal from the list. CXMT said the Pentagon published a notice in February 2026 stating that the company would be removed from the list, but withdrew the notice later the same day. The company alleged that the Defense Department subsequently relisted it in June 2026 without adequately explaining the change in position. “None of these determinations is supported by the factual record, by applicable law, or by reasoned decision-making,” CXMT said.
CXMT’s lawsuit mirrors that of other Chinese companies. In June, Alibaba, the Chinese technology and e-commerce giant, sued the U.S. government over being placed on a list of businesses from China that the Department of Defense linked to that country’s military.
(Reporting by Che Pan, Christian Martinez, Mrinmay Dey; Editing by Caitlin Webber, William Mallard and Stephen Coates)
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