Samsung heir meets Chinese vice premier

By Kim Yoo-chul

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul Friday to discuss partnership.

The Lee-Wang meeting came a year after they talked about key issues in Beijing, China, in February, the company said.

“Samsung will expand partnership with Chinese provincial cities, regional governments and main Chinese companies to boost trade between the two countries,” Lee was quoted as saying in a statement.

Lee briefed Wang on Samsung's key China business projects.

Samsung Electronics is the biggest single foreign investor in China. It operates massive display and memory chip facilities in Xian and Suzhou.

For Xian chip plants, Samsung's total spending is expected to soar $7.5 billion as Samsung plans to build additional memory chip lines to meet increasing demand.

Separately, Wang held a meeting with LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo in Seoul for future business talks.

Like Samsung, the LG Group of technology affiliates have also been increasing their spending on China with the group's display affiliate of LG Display taking the lead.

LG Display runs the world's largest display complex in the southern Chinese industrial city of Guangzhou.

LG Chem is also forming a joint venture with two Chinese companies to build a new plant for batteries to be used in electric vehicles in the southern city of Nanjing, where some LG affiliates already operate a technology complex.