“The Chinese government has credibility to pick on Qualcomm because of investigations into the company in other countries,” said Scott Kennedy, director of the Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business at Indiana University. “But it also definitely fits their industrial policy goals if they can squeeze in lower licensing fees or other technology-sharing arrangements.”

As it takes aim at foreign players, China is striving to develop its chip industry. Over the past 15 years, the government has granted subsidies, funding and even extraordinary rights to promising chip makers.

To attract international talent, the founder of one chip maker, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, added amenities like a bilingual school to entice the highly skilled engineers he needed to put together complex assembly lines. The founder, a Christian, even built a church — of particular appeal to Christian Taiwanese, who are accustomed to companies sponsoring Bible study and similar activities — even though Beijing remains highly suspicious of the spread of Christianity.

Image Vice Premier Ma Kai leads efforts to make China’s chip industry a world leader by 2030. Credit... Jason Lee/Reuters

With help from government subsidies, SMIC has become a major chip producer since its founding in 2000, though it still lacks the scale and technology to compete at the level of companies like Intel, Samsung and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Other companies founded with government funding in the early 2000s sell chip designs for cheap smartphones but remain small compared with Qualcomm.

The Chinese government has been suspected of being involved in schemes to acquire chip technology with military applications. In 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicted two Chinese men, charging them with illegally trying to buy reprogrammable chips from an American company, Lattice Semiconductor, that could be used at high temperatures on spacecraft like rockets. The men are presumed to be in China and have not been arrested.

In two separate cases in 2011, Chinese citizens were prosecuted for trying to procure radiation-hardened chips for use in satellites. In one case two defendants pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Arms Export Control Act and to smuggle goods unlawfully from the United States. In the second case, one defendant pleaded guilty to violating that same act by selling chips to China. Analysts say attempts by Chinese companies to acquire confidential American technology are usually state-directed if not state-led.