High-tech goes west

Hewlett-Packard is a pioneer in moving to the west. Its first made-in-Chongqing notebook computer rolled out of the assembly line on January 26. That was the first of 24 million computers that HP plans to produce annually from there, out of the 65 million it will produce worldwide by 2012.
HP’s go-west move is no exception. Foxconn Technology Group, Quanta and Inventec are also planning to open factories in Chongqing’s Xiyong Micro-electronic Industrial Park.
The park, founded in 2005, has seen an increasing number of companies either moving or opening branches in Chongqing from the well-developed eastern and southern China. From 2005 to 2008, investments in the park reached US$1 billion. In the past 18 months this has rocketed to about US$3 billion.
English People’s Daily Online reports Zhu Jiang, the park’s deputy director, as saying the success of manufacturers in eastern and southern China lies in cheap labor and duty-free policies.