According to reporting from China's Xinhua News Agency posted at CRIEnglish.com, Foxconn Electronics has signed an agreement with the government of Hunan Province to set up production and research bases in central China.
It is the first move into the centrally located Hunan by the world's largest electronics contractor, which is based in south China's Shenzhen. The move is part of the manufacturer's strategy of moving production from coastal China to inland areas, said the report. Jiang Haoliang, Foxconn's head of high-technology integration, who signed the agreement on Wednesday December 8, 2010 said 100,000 of the company's 1 million employees were natives of Hunan. "Foxconn values the quality of staff from the province," he said.
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According to the agreement, the proposed plants and research centers will be located in the provincial capital of Changsha and Hengyang City. The company declined to disclose how many staff it planned to recruit in Hunan. Jiang said the company would make hardware and software, and research new products in the integration of telecommunications and cable TV networks and the Internet.
City governments of the province have offered incentives such as land and tax reductions to support Foxconn's business development, but officials declined to give details of the incentives.
Foxconn, part of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., announced earlier this year it would open plants in the inland provinces of Henan and Sichuan. It also has assembly plants in other inland provinces, including Hebei, Shanxi and Hubei. The Chinese manufacturer is noted for its production consumer electronics gadgets such as Apple's iPad.
Source: http://english.cri.cn/6826/2010/12/08/1821s609156.htm
