Leading chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has joined a growing list of Chinese technology companies suing the US government over their additions to Pentagon blacklists, as legal experts said US courts had shown a willingness to hold the Department of Defence to account.
Recent rulings involving Chinese tech firms including lidar sensor maker Hesai Group, drone manufacturer DJI and biotech firm WuXi AppTec indicated that judges were prepared to scrutinise the US government’s evidence and grant interim relief, said Mark Shi, a compliance lawyer at Shanghai-based Co-Effort Law Firm.
Other Chinese companies have cases pending – including the tech giant Alibaba Group Holding, which was granted a temporary reprieve over a lobbying restriction last month. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The CXMT case would test whether a company’s broad ties to China’s industry ministry or state-asset regulator were enough to label it as a military-linked entity, and to what extent such US national-security determinations remained subject to evidence, reasoned explanation and due process, Shi added.
CXMT, China’s largest maker of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips, filed a lawsuit in a Washington federal court on Friday against the US Department of Defence, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth named as a defendant.
The company is seeking removal from the Pentagon’s Section 1260H list of Chinese companies with military ties. It was first added to the blacklist in January 2025, and kept on the list after a review in June.