Chairman Zhao Weiguo said that discussions are still taking place over the 51 per cent stake in HP subsidiary, H3C which could be worth $5 billion.

Zhao has come a long way since he herded goats as a child and later amassed a fortune in coal, gas and real estate in the northwestern desert region of Xinjiang.

He appears to be making his money by offering foreign companies a connection to the vast China market.

Zhao told the Wall Street Journal that many people suspect hi is a 'white glove' for the Chinese government.
"But we're really just a very market-oriented company."

Mr. Zhao's company has drawn interest from both U.S. firms and support from China's top officials, as Beijing strives to develop a homegrown semiconductor sector.

Tsinghua Unigroup became China's largest chip maker after acquiring two of the country's largest mobile-chip firms, Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics, in 2013.
Intelsaid last year that they believe partnering with Spreadtrum is opening doors for the company in the low-cost smartphone market, a sector that Intel has its eye on.

Spreadtrum

Tsinghua Unigroup's largest chip subsidiary Spreadtrum is a major maker of processors for low-cost smartphones in emerging markets. The company's main rival is Taiwan's Mediatek Inc., which supplies low- to midrange smartphone chips.

Little is known about Tsinghua Unigroup outside of China. It was founded in 1988 by China's elite Tsinghua University, the alma mater of many of the country's top leaders, including current President Xi Jinping.

It is still controlled by a university holding company and has close ties with the government through Tsinghua's alumni network. The son of former Chinese President Hu Jintao was previously the Communist Party head of the firm's parent company.

H-P inherited H3C, a major supplier of corporate-data networking gear in China, when it bought 3Com Corp. in 2010. H3C was formed in November 2003 as a joint-venture between China's Huawei and 3Com, but recently has faced uncertainty under H-P ownership because of Beijing's push for state-owned firms to use domestic technology suppliers, people familiar with the matter said.