Samsung chief visits chip parts manufacturing unit in China

SEOUL, March 26 (Yonhap) -- Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong has visited a semiconductor components manufacturing site in China run by a Samsung affiliate, the company said Sunday, in the first such trip to the neighboring country in three years.

Lee visited the manufacturing facility in Tianjin, operated by Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., on Friday and checked the multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) production line, Samsung Electronics said.

It marked Lee's first visit to a Samsung plant in China in three years as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business trips. Lee last visited Samsung Electronics' key chip plant in Xian in May 2020.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics mainly develops and manufactures advanced electronics and mechanical components, including chip parts, such as MLCCs, that control the flow of the current in a circuit and semiconductor substrates. The Tianjin MLCC line went into operation in 2021.

Lee met with Chen Min'er, the party secretary of the Tianjin city, for discussions on business cooperation. Chang Duck-hyun, CEO of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, and Choi Joo-sun, CEO of Samsung Display, also attended the meeting.

Lee arrived in Beijing on Thursday to attend the China Development Forum, a high-profile annual forum set to run from Saturday till Monday.

Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, Pfizer Inc. CEO Albert Bourla and Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm Technologies Inc., are expected to be present at the forum.

The forum takes place amid mounting tension between Washington and Beijing after the U.S. government earlier this week released national security guardrails for its Chips Act, limiting business activities of chipmakers receiving federal subsidies to block China from getting access to key chip technologies.

Samsung, the world's largest memory chip maker, runs a chip manufacturing plant in the Chinese city of Xian, which is responsible for some 40 percent of Samsung's global NAND flash production. In Suzhou, the chipmaker operates a semiconductor packaging factory.

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