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Reportedly, on March 26th, the Intel Corp., the world's largest microchip manufacturer, is due to release its detailed plan to establish a facility in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian. The facility will be Intel's first semiconductor manufacturing plant in Asia, and will be funded with an estimated 2.5 billion USD investment. China's central government has given a green light to Intel's planned facility, according to a representative of the National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC).

Unlike the assembly and testing facilities in Shanghai and Chenduo, and the incision plant in Singapore, the Dalian facility will be focused on the construction of the Integrated Circuits (IC), the core component of CPUs. The Dalian facility is projected to produce an output of 12 inches of IC chips monthly (about 52,000 in number).

China became the world's biggest chip market in 2005, accounting for 21% of the 192 billion USD in global sales. The nation's chip market is projected to triple in the next five years, creating 41 billion USD in sales.

As the Chinese IT market continues to develop rapidly, personal computers and processing chips will generate massive sales. In the U.S. and Europe, the majority of consumers have computers already and it is expected that China will progress to the same degree.

International electronics giants including Intel are increasingly entering the Chinese market looking to capitalize on unprecedented growth levels. One way to accomplish this is to establish facilities and manufacturing plants in the country itself. This strategy is designed to shorten the distance between the manufacturing location of the products themselves and their eventual consumers, thereby cutting overhead costs.