By Eva Dou
BEIJING --Tsinghua Holdings Ltd., the parent company of the
chipmaker attempting what could be China's largest takeover of a
U.S. company, hopes to expand its U.S. partnerships beyond hardware
to companies like Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp., an executive
said.
Tsinghua Holdings Chairman Xu Jinghong told reporters Tuesday
that his company had met with representatives from Facebook and
Microsoft and hoped to partner with them. It was not immediately
clear when the meetings took place, and Mr. Xu said that the
meetings were preliminary introductions, with no discussion of
concrete collaborations.
Tsinghua Holdings is the research and investment unit of China's
premier Tsinghua University. It has close ties to senior government
officials in Beijing through the school's alumni network. The
company has recently gained interest from Silicon Valley firms due
to its political influence, amid difficult business conditions in
China for U.S. companies.
U.S. tech companies have felt a chill over business in China
following disclosures by former U.S. security contractor Edward
Snowden in 2013 that Washington allegedly used the country's
technology products to spy on foreign governments.
Intel Corp. bought a stake in Tsinghua Holdings' high-tech
subsidiary Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd. in September, and Hewlett-Packard
Co. sold a majority stake of its China networking business to the
Chinese company in May. Tsinghua Unigroup is seeking to acquire
U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc., in what would be the
biggest Chinese overseas takeover if successful, The Wall Street
Journal reported last month.
"We hope to cooperate with more outstanding companies," said Mr.
Xu on Tuesday. "In the future, we hope to cooperate with Microsoft,
Facebook."
Write to Eva Dou at eva.dou@wsj.com
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