HONG KONG, 13 OCTOBER 2008 – China’s Chongqing Municipality has announced plans for an advanced manufacturing complex with HP to accelerate economic development in West China.
According to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, HP will operate a 20,000-square- meter facility in Chongqing, where it will manufacture notebooks and desktop PCs for China, the world’s most populous country with 1.3 billion people (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2007).
Untapped economic opportunity
Manufacturing operations are expected to begin in 2010. When in full operation, the HP-managed plant is expected to have the capacity to meet market demand in Chongqing plus other parts of China across government, public and retail sectors.
Wang Hongju, mayor of Chongqing Municipality, said: “Our vision of transforming Chongqing into China’s West IT center requires strong participation from the world’s most innovative and respected companies. We welcome and support the HP venture, which will accelerate the development and bring new economic opportunity to an area previously untapped.”
Double-digit GDP growth
Chongqing is one of the fastest growing cities in China. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2007, Chongqing’s GDP was $410 billion (RMB) with a growth rate of 15.6 per cent over the prior year. The city has 500,000 university students and more than 1,000 research and development institutions. The development of West China is attractive to IT vendors like HP as a result of the educated work force and development conditions offered by the local government.
