Tongfang Guoxin Electronics which is part of the government backed Tsinghua Unigroup, has announced a planned $12.59 billion private placement project, a step toward building itself as a semiconductor giant in China.

The money being raised is four times Tongfang Guoxin's market value when its shares were suspended for trading in October.

Part of the cash will be used to finance construction of a memory chip plant, some will be used to buy a quarter of the Taiwan-based IC backend service company Powertech Technology. The rest will be used to by some upstream and downstream suppliers in the chip industry, Tongfang Guoxin announced.

Tsinghua Unigroup chairman Zhao Weiguo said recently in Taipei that his group's current focus is on its deployment in the NAND flash sector.

Zhao recently visited NAND flash controller chipmaker Phison Electronics, which started a rumour that Tsinghua Unigroup will buy Phison to build its memory chip capacity.

China wants to reduce its dependence on foreign chipmakers, but equally if it throws enough cash at the market it could enter overseas markets too.