Once upon a time (maybe 50 years ago), China was a technologically and financially backward nation – while Japan was surging ahead as one of the world's engineering centres of excellence.

KitGuru takes a look at Japan's Elpida memory company and the likelihood that it will be owned by Chinese money before the end of April.

As reported by KitGuru, Japanese memory giant Elipda is in big trouble.

While we all know that Hynix and Micron will want to bid for Japan's jewel-in-the-crown memory company, Elpida, the Japanese government are not likely to want to see the corporation and its amazing production facilities passed over to bitter rival, South Korea.

On that basis, how likely is it that Elpida will soon be a joint China-USA venture?

Hony Capital of China was started with a cash injection from Legend – the company behind Lenovo. Right now, it has almost $7 billion in financial muscle. To buy Elpida, it will partner up with TPG Capital from Texas (who have almost $50 billion in holdings).

The move for Elpida, would instantly give China a Top 3 memory production facility – with advanced technologies in the pipeline – and with back-end partners like Lenovo on hand to place major orders.

Bidding for the still-breathing corpse of Elipda will end on 27th April and this is likely to be a hard-fought battle for control with so much at stake.

KitGuru says: No matter how solid a bid is received, the whole situation must be embarrassing to Japan. Over the last 50 years, the Japanese have peaked and now begun to fall in world rankings – while China shows no signs of a slow down any time soon.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

Become a Patron!