Tsinghua Unigroup, the chipmaking arm of China's Tsinghua University, defaulted on a bond payment of $198 million, David Manners writes. The default raises questions about whether the Chinese chipmaker can fund a planned DRAM fabrication facility project with a budget of $110 billion, he notes.

Chinese chipmakers will buy more than $14 billion in semiconductor equipment next year, an increase of about 21% from 2019, outpacing Taiwan and South Korea, which will spend $11.64 billion and $10.47 billion, respectively, in 2020, SEMI forecasts. China's expenditures in 2020 will be led by Tsinghua Unigroup and other silicon foundries, the trade organization says.

With volume production of 64-layer 3D NAND flash memories commencing by the end of this year, Yangtze Memory Technologies is reportedly in discussions with Tsinghua Unigroup, its parent company, about being allowed to sell flash-based data storage devices, such as solid-state drives, with those memory chips, industry sources say. Beijing Unis Memory Technology, another Tsinghua Unigroup affiliate, is said to now have the responsibility to market and sell such storage devices with YMTC's memories.

While China's national government is hoping that the country's semiconductor industry will be less reliant on imported microchips and the foreign machinery to make them five years from now, executives of Tsinghua Unigroup are taking a longer-term view. "It (will) take more than 20 years for China to establish a complete chip industry system," says Diao Shi, co-president of the chip company.