Zhao Weiguo: China’s No. 1 chip tycoon vanishes

Zhao Weiguo rode a decades-long boom in China pursuing Beijing’s core industrial policy of semiconductor self-sufficiency. Then he fell foul of Xi Jinping.

Zhao Weiguo
(Image credit: © REUTERS / Alamy)

One of China’s most prominent technology tycoons, Zhao Weiguo, has mysteriously vanished, having apparently fallen foul of Xi Jinping’s government, according to Chinese business site Caixin.

Zhao, 54, led the now cash-strapped chipmaking giant Tsinghua Unigroup for a decade, says the Financial Times. But he has been “out of contact” since mid-July after “being taken from his home by authorities”. According to local media, he is “under investigation by officials in Beijing”.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.