Western Digital must reassure China in bid for Hitachi unit

China said Western Digital must address concerns that its proposed acquisition of Hitachi's storage business will hurt competition before regulators approve the purchase. Western Digital's acquisition will hurt competition in the market for computer hard-disk drives "to a certain extent", Shang Ming, head of the Ministry of Commerce's anti-monopoly bureau, said in Beijing yesterday. The ministry will seek "appropriate solutions" to address its concerns, he said. "China is the world's biggest computer consumer and so naturally the deal will exert a negative impact on Chinese consumers," Ming said at a briefing held to review the bureau's activity in 2011. Growing prominence The importance of Chinese approval for acquisitions has increased as economic growth averaging 10 per cent in the past three decades transformed the nation into the world's biggest consumer of products including computers, automobiles, and mobile phones. Western Digital won Eur-opean Union approval for its purchase of Hitachi's unit last month after agreeing to sell off some disk-drive production. The sale of "essential production assets" for 3.5-inch hard disk drives eliminates concerns that Western Digital would only face Seagate Technology as a rival supplier, the European Commission said.