Look what money can buy:
Tsinghua Unigroup, one of China’s leading chipmakers, has hired Japanese semiconductor industry veteran Yukio Sakamoto as a senior vice president and also head of the company’s Japan unit.
Sakamoto, 72, served as chief executive of once-leading Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory, which was established by combining the memory chip units of NEC and Hitachi.
Besides Sakamoto’s experience, the Chinese government-backed Unigroup likely aims to put his connections in Japan and beyond to work as it expands its reach.
In an interview with Nikkei this year, Sakamoto said it was imperative for China to develop its own chip technology, rather than poaching engineers from South Korea or Taiwan with high salaries.
“It’s better for China to persevere for five years and develop its own technology and build a foundation. China has a large domestic market and it would be better to nurture the ability to create semiconductor products that fit that market,” he said.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Electronics/Japan-chip-industry-heavyweight-joins-China-s-Unigroup
I guess that they are not happy in Japan:
In Japan, 85% say they have an unfavorable opinion of China – the most negative among all countries surveyed. More than half in South Korea (63%), Australia (57%) and the Philippines (54%) share this sentiment. Opinion of China has also fallen across the region over the course of Pew Research Center’s polling and is now hovering at or near historic lows in each of the countries.
This is what Sakamoto planned:
Yukio Sakamoto, the former Elpida CEO, hatched Sino King Technology with plans to gather hundreds of senior chip engineers from Japan, Taiwan and Korea. The startup began its life as part of a $7 billion project conducted by the city of Hefei, capital of Anhui province in eastern China. The project included a wafer fab to produce cutting-edge semiconductors in its city.
Sino King started with 10 Japanese and Taiwanese engineers, with plans to hire experts in design and production technology, aiming to employ around 1,000 engineers.
Sino King, however, no longer appears to be in active operations.
According to Yunogami, Sakamoto in recruiting had promised Japanese semiconductor engineers an annual salary of 100,000,000 yen (roughly $887,000) under the condition that they must move to China and live there for at least three years.
Word on the street in Japan is that Sakamoto actually succeeded in signing up 180 Japanese engineers. Progress stalled at Sino King, not because of lagging recruitment, but because Chinese investors refused to accept Sakamoto’s promise to hire engineers at such an exorbitant salary. Sakamoto reportedly would not back down, refusing to go lower than 100,000,000 yen.
Read more:
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331254# and now Sakamoto is senior vice president of Tsinghua Unigroup.