A Chinese technology company has expressed interest in buying a maker of computer disk drives in the United States, raising concerns among American government officials about the risks to national security in transferring high technology to China. Although disk drives do not fall under a list of export-controlled technologies, the attempted purchase of an American disk drive company would require a security review by the federal government, according to several government officials. Seagate's shares rose 1.05 percent Friday to close at $24.96 and were up about 4 percent for the week after news that it might enter the flash memory market.

With a booming economy and $1.33 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, Chinese companies are in a position to acquire American companies, as Japanese and West European companies were several decades ago. While those earlier acquisitions were often opposed out of fears that they would damage American economic competitiveness, the acquisition of American companies by Chinese companies is regarded with more suspicion, particularly in the high-tech sector.