Trade war woes: Xi Jinping's alma mater now faces a massive debt problem

As part of China's university reform Unigroup's controlling shareholder Tsinghua Holdings Corp has attempted to disentangle itself from the company multiple times

A crown jewel of President Xi Jinping’s Made in China 2025 plan is faltering.

Tsinghua Unigroup Co is the business arm of the prestigious Tsinghua University, Xi’s alma mater. The company has been trying to establish itself as a leader in China’s nascent memory-chip industry since 2015, when it famously tried to acquire stakes in US rivals Micron Technology Inc and Western Digital Corp Both advances were rejected amid concerns that US regulators wouldn’t approve the deals on national-security grounds. 

Rebuffed abroad, Unigroup resolved to become a domestic champion and poured its resources into developing flash-memory technology. One of its subsidiaries, three-year-old