Living in the luxury of laptops

As car-dependent Detroit in the United States took a lashing during the global economic crises that began to hit in 2008, Chongqing began to look for opportunities in other fields, including electronics.

At the same time, electronics manufacturers that were concentrated in coastal areas such as Guangdong province and the Yangtze River Delta were looking to move elsewhere.

"There was a shortage of resources in coastal cities," says An Hui, director of CCID Group, a think tank that is part of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

"With rapid economic growth in China, the cost of land, electricity and labor in coastal areas was rising. Because of the dearth of labor and high costs, electronics companies were being forced to look to the west."

Sniffing the opportunities, Chongqing began courting business by introducing preferential policies such as lower business tax to lure them away from cities such as Suzhou in Jiangsu province.

"Relocation very much suited the needs of the western region," An says.

At the same time, moving west fitted well with the companies' strategic plans, he says.

"The area brought in companies to produce complete laptops, and that attracted businesses that could produce components for the supply chain."

The result, he says, can be seen today: a laptop manufacturing center. There are several industrial parks in Chongqing that specialize in electronics manufacturing.

Three years after HP arrived in town, Acer Inc, the multinational hardware and electronics maker based in Taiwan, and the fourth largest personal computer seller in the world in 2013, joined it, and its growth since then has been no less remarkable than that of its US rival.

Since the first Acer laptop came off the production line in Chongqing in 2011, the plant's contribution to Acer's laptop making has steadily grown. In the first year, laptops made in Chongqing accounted for 20 percent of the laptops Acer made worldwide, says Zhang Yonghong, president of Acer Greater China. This year that figure is expected to be 90 percent.

More than 85 percent of Acer laptops made in Chongqing are exported, most going to Europe and the US, he says. The city exported 48.68 million laptops worth $19.8 billion in 2013, almost two-thirds of them to the European Union and North America, the Chongqing Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Commission says.

"China is the world's biggest seller of electronic products," An says. "Computer products account for 80 percent of those sales. Among the electronic information manufacture products that China exports, laptops rank second in total value."

Legend Holdings invests in green tea company	Lenovo extendsglobal outreach