Intel Announces $2.5B Chip Factory In China

[OhioChick]

Source: AP

Facility To Be China's Biggest Foreign High-Tech Investment

POSTED: 1:36 am EDT March 26, 2007

BEIJING -- Intel Corporation announced Monday it will build a $2.5 billion chip factory in China.

It will give the U.S. company a bigger presence in the booming Chinese market and boost Beijing's effort to attract high-tech investment.

The factory will produce chipsets, a key component in personal computers, mobile phones and other products.

The facility will be Intel's first wafer fabrication factory in Asia and its first built from scratch since 1992.

The Intel factory will be China's biggest foreign high-tech investment to date.

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/money/11374405/detail.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Mission Accomplished" - Marvin Bush & republicon corporate cronies

"You can bet your bippy the Bush Family Evil Empire will find a way to profit
massively from this. Why don't you noisy proles just shut up, and get down
to your local local burger joint to apply for a McJob?"

- Marvin Marvelous Bush and Neil Silverado Bush.
certified insider cronies of the BFEE, and 'special' envoys to
the Godless Red Commies for the obviously Godless & Amoral republicon party

[w4rma]

2. Wow, that will make it very easy for China to steal Intel's chip making secrets.

The Chinese government and Chinese corporate competitors would be stupid not to jump at the chance to steal that information.

[MGD]

3. And the right accused the Clinton administration of being a bunch of panda-huggers?

Under Bush, China has advanced at twice the rate they advanced under Clinton. Whether it be due to incompetence or willfull intention or a combination of both I can not say.

[Omaha Steve]

4. Clinton's idea was to....

See that American companies would get business from the trade agreement too. Trouble is most of the new business is mostly inside China's borders, So the workers in the US don't get much work from that deal.

[pampango]

15. "Under Bush, China has advanced at twice the rate they advanced under Clinton."

Is this a political commercial for Bush? Here is a Third World country with lots and lots of poor people that has advanced twice as fast under Bush. (I'm not sure that is true. China was growing pretty fast in the '90's as well.)

Do you view China as an enemy whose advancement has to be slowed down as much as possible? If so, then our next Democratic president in 2009 should do everything in his or her power to slow down the development of China. (Hah, for the good ol' days under Mao, when all Chinese were poor (very egalitarian) and they made nothing that any other country would want, so they were no competition for us or anyone else. Sure a few million may have starved, but the '50's, 60's and 70's were better times for American workers, right?)

[MGD]

22. speaking of panda hugging

"Do you view China as an enemy..."
I think they are something between an enemy and an ally. Their perspective of us is probably of as ambivalent as our perspective of them. I believe they are definitely a threat to our interests and that confrontation with them in some form will be inevitable in this century. Our interests will conflict.

"...whose advancement has to be slowed down as much as possible?"
Something like that.

"If so, then our next Democratic president in 2009 should do everything in his or her power to slow down the development of China."
He or she should not actively facillitate their advancement. They should view China not as an enemy necessariily but as a competitor who should not be allowed to obtain a position of dominance over us.

[Javaman]

5. So odd...

Samsung and Toyota build huge plants here, yet American manufacturers build plants in china.

[pampango]

8. Actually, the reasoning if fairly similar.

There is a related story at a link within the OP article that states that 34% of Intel's worldwide sales are to China and Taiwan and this will be the first factory they have built there. Intel is probably using the same logic that Samsung, Toyota, Honda, Subaru and other foreign-owned companies use when they build factories in the US.

It must make economic sense to build these products closer to the eventual market where they will be sold. Plus, it must make political sense to show the host country (and its politicians) that you are committed to their economy by hiring local citizens and paying taxes.

http://www.newsnet5.com/money/11250110/detail.html

[OhioChick]

11. As Usual,

I figured you'd come along and defend this move. Bringing up Toyota and Honda is getting old. Remember this?

Toyota sweats U.S. labor costs; leaked memo calls for holding down wage growth

http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070208/BUSINESS01/70208019


You make it sound like foreign companies are coming to the US in droves.

[pampango]

14. I didn't mean to defend Intel only. I meant to defend Intel and

the other companies I mentioned.

Are you only attacking Intel for locating a factory in China or are you equally attacking Toyota and Honda for locating factories in a foreign country (the US)? It is not like Intel announced layoffs in the US at the same time they announced building the factory in China, a country in which they do substantial business and is likely to become the biggest economy in the world in the future.

Am I to assume that you think that is only those sneaky Asian corporate managers who strategize ways to hold down the growth in wages? American corporate managers spend all day trying to think of ways to pay their employees more and more? I suspect corporate types have many common character traits regardless of their nationality.

I only mentioned four companies. I didn't mean to leave the impression that there were countless foreign companies in the US. Would it make any difference to you, if research proved there were thousands of them employing millions of Americans? Or would that be cause for a patriotic concern that we can't have that many Americans working for .... foreigners?

[OhioChick]

17. Don't try to turn this into something that it's not.....

On every layoff/job cut/outsourcing thread that I seem to post, you show up cheering about how great free trade and outsourcing are terrific for other countries. I have yet to hear you sympathize for American workers. Why is that? (Not to mention your constant stumping for Toyota and Honda plants)

Ever feel bad for the US worker that has gone to college (Paid a fortune for their education) for many years and can't find a job here? (Oh, that's right......"we're" unskilled here) Or for someone that has worked in manufacturing for a few decades and is laid off and has no where else to go?

What happens once most technology, legal, accounting, etc. jobs are gone.....as well as manufacturing here? I guess that we can all then agree with you that free trade/outsourcing are wonderful for "us."

I'm going to feed my dog now. Guess I'll have to boil up some meat, since free trade has done wonders for the pet food industry here. :sarcasm:

[pampango]

19. You may have missed my posts sympathizing with the plight

of some American workers. Many have gone to college, or have lots of work experience and can't find jobs. I have not read many of your posts sympathizing with the plight of poor people in the Third World. I am sure that does not mean that you do not care about them, just that you focused on the plight of Americans.

Do I care about my family more than my neighbors? Yes. I care more about my neighbors than the people across town; more about them than the people on the other side of the state; more about them than people a couple of states over; more about them than the people in other countries. I do try to still care about people in other countries, even though they may not speak English or have a passport that looks like mine.

I bring up Toyota and Honda because they have factories near where I live and I know people who work at each. I only mention them to point out that outsourcing is not a one-way street. I am sure there are other examples of foreign companies who locate in the US, but I am not aware of them.

[ChromeFoundry]

23. Remember, the "Ignore" feature works splendidly! n/t

:hi:

[OhioChick]

24. So I've Been Told!

:hi:

[pampango]

27. Just posting my opinions. We don't have to agree with each other.

:toast:

[Morereason]

32. Intel is importing workers to the US while laying off citizens

I have friends who still work for Intel. All the time the "big layoffs" were happening to Americans they were still growing in numbers. They are hiring and training employees in places like India and China, then they are able to immigrate them to US under unlimited programs as "existing employees".

Intel's was American made and it's money was grown in America. They have an obligation they are not fulfilling.

[Purveyor]

6. More jobs that americans don't want to do...

:sarcasm:

[Centered]

29. yup

I think it's because we don't like the way we look in those clean room "Bunny Suits"

:sarcasm:

[progressivebydesign]

7. Corporate America has officiall killed America as we knew it.

And the fuckheads in the Fed Reserve wonder why people are defaulting on their homes... add this to the news of Citigroup laying off 15 THOUSAND people soon, after Intel laid off thousands last year... gosh, wonder why the economy is faltering? Oil companies are raking in obscene profits with no glance by the Feds, and yet the Federal Reserve is "troubled" by inflation. Gosh, wonder why there's inflation? Oh.. But the Fed Reserve will tell you that even if they factor out energy costs, there is inflation. I don't have a degree in economics like those brilliant folks do... but even I know that ALL goods go up in price when the energy costs rise obscenely. Duh. How many of us have personal experience with our own biz or others where prices have had to be raised in the past few years due to increased cost of gas/oil.

[jmowreader]

9. If you were buildng a hazmat producer, where would you put it?

Chip making requires a lot of electricity and a lot of water. It uses chemicals like arsenic, hydrofluoric acid and phosphorus. It requires an expensive, highly-taxable factory that sits on a great deal of expensive, highly-taxable land.

California ain't such a good place to do that anymore, but China still has cheap land, low taxes and lax environmental and safety regulations.

And when you're done, most of your output is going to China anyway.

So where the hell else would you put it?

[hogwyld]

20. Truer words never said

I'm in China on business, and I have to say, they really have no environmental, or safety regulations to speak of. On top of that, a HIGHLY paid sr.engineer here earns about $12000 a year before taxes. Most labor in the fabs get about .50 an hour. This is still the wild west so to speak where everything goes as long as there's profit in it. Definitely no NIMBY stuff to deal with. There's NO way the US can compete with that.

[customerserviceguy]

25. Yeah

I get $10.50 an hour for working in a computer chip fab here, and they want to undercut me. I have to work night shift just to get the 15% shift differential to pay my bills.

I put in my notice last week, I'm tired of killing myself (my feet hurt terribly after the four day 12 hour-a-day weeks) and hope I can get back to office work when I move to NY next month.

It sucks to be an American manufacturing worker.

[Morereason]

33. Ummm... Oregon? That is where they were originally to be built

Funny how those facilities already exists and the air and land are clean.....
Intel had already bought land and made plans for new facilities. They are abandoning it now.

[Canuckistanian]

10. Chipmaking has been in Asia for a LONG time

Try and name one company that produces semiconductor devices in America. They don't exist. At least not in production volumes.

The economics just aren't there. Sure, there's automation, but there's still a lot of manual labor required.

You want a chip made? You go to Asia.

That's the way it is and has been for the last decade.

[IDemo]

12. Micron does in Boise, Idaho and Manassas, Virginia

Although they also have just opened a new plant in China

[Xithras]

16. True. Most Intel CPU's are made in Malaysia IIRC.

Intel hasn't manufactured chips in the US in large quantities in at least 15 years.

[Massachusetts]

13. 21F.101 / 21F.151 Chinese I (Regular), Spring 2006

Its not to late to sign up.


http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Foreign-Languages-and-Literatures/21F-101Spring-2006/CourseHome/index.htm

[WindRavenX]

18. America is really becoming a third world country.

This bullshit outsourcing needs to stop.

[Psephos]

21. First step: quit buying cars assembled overseas n/t

[rcdean]

26. Chips will be non-processors and 1 or 2 generations behind state-of-the-art

A journalist I am close to, who knows Paul Otellini, Intel Corp.'s CEO from previous interviews and was at the press conference in Beijing yesterday where the announcement was made, wrote the story for today's WSJ and brought out a couple of important additional points:

WSJ Story excerpts -- pm me for a non-subscriber's link
...
But the plant, which is slated to begin production in 2010 in the city of Dalian, won't initially make Intel's core product, the microprocessors that are the brains in personal computers. Instead, it will make chip sets, which connect microprocessors to other parts of the PC. And Intel is expected to use manufacturing technology a generation or two behind the state-of-the-art in Dalian.

Mr. Otellini said, however, that the factory's technological level could change if the U.S. government eases restrictions on the export of advanced-technology goods like chip equipment.
...
The Dalian plant will be a wafer-fabrication facility, or "fab," which puts microscopic circuits on silicon discs.
...
Analysts say an important reason to build a fab in China is to help Intel's image in the country, which Mr. Otellini said is now the second-biggest market in the world for technology products after the U.S., and which could soon become the biggest...


Looks to me like Intel is trying to negotiate with China to produce more current chips without having to go through the eventual "technology transfer" stage that China has heretofore required of virtually all foreign tech companies that build facilities there. Then again, that may just be wishful thinking on my part.

[jmowreader]

30. Don't...uhh...Japanese companies make chip equipment?

[Vinca]

28. This is so depressing. Our country is turning into a nation of

hamburger flippers and Walmart greeters. Within 10 miles of where I'm sitting there used to be factories that made shoes, handbags and books. A family could count on a decent living. No more.

[superconnected]

31. another thrid world sweatshop...

cheap labor, with all it's trimmings - long hours, low pay, no benefits, packed in like sardines with no retaliation for work related injuries incurred by repetition and slumping over a production table for years on end.

Intel is only there for the cheap labor and lax labor laws.

[hogwyld]

34. Don't forget

The non existant environmental laws as well.

[Skittles]

35. I guess communism is now in vogue

:puke: