Xi's microchip dreams under stress as Unigroup hints $450 mn bond default

With sprawling operations from memory chip manufacturing to smartphone and smart card chip design, Unigroup is the closest China's got to Samsung Group

The most beautiful daughter gets married off first, a Chinese saying goes. But sometimes, a favorite child can be so pampered, so high-maintenance, that she’s homebound well past her prime years. Eventually, everyone starts wondering if she will have any suitors at all.

This is what’s happening at Tsinghua University, the prestigious, nearly 110-year old school that is President Xi Jinping’s alma mater. After defaulting in mid-November, Tsinghua Unigroup Co., a commercial arm and “favorite daughter” of the university, has brought in a government-led working group to diffuse its debt crisis. On Wednesday night, the company warned that it will not