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Intel, one of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductors, plans to set up a US$50 million research and development centre in Beijing to conduct research on the use of the Internet and related information technology.

The plan, announced last week, follows recent moves by several other leading multinational companies to set up research and development (R&D) centres in China's capital. Motorola, Hewlett Packard and IBM are said to be planning similar centres.

Intel plans to invest $50 million during the next five years in the centre, which will carry out research with particular relevance to Chinese applications, such as speech recognition. It will also fund projects at China's leading universities and research institutes.

Despite the economic uncertainty in the region, several other multinational companies have also recently set up R&D centres in China. In April, for example, Procter and Gamble became the first multinational company to set up an R&D centre at the scieence park at Tsinghua University, one of China's leading universities, in Beijing.

The previous month, Bell Laboratories announced that it had set up a small R&D centre on Peking UUniversity's campus in Beijing, which will conduct joint research with the university.

“China has a deep pool of talented scientists and engineers, and there is a great opportunity to assemble a world-class team here to do some outstanding research,” Andrew Grove, chairman and chief executive officer of Intel, said last week.

Intel's announcement has been welcomed by Chinese academics and researchers, who argue that the establishment of Intel's China Research Center will help to improve the level of fundamental research in high technology in China. “It represents a new trend for foreign investment in China,” according to Peiyan Zeng, Chairman of China's State Development Planning Commission.

Some academics say that Intel must contribute actively to China's well-being, and not merely benefit from its resources. The centre should consider its relationship with the Chinese scientific community and provide practical help, argues Jiaxin Wang, deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Technology and Systems.

Research at the centre could stimulate new research at universities, he says. But the centre should promote collaboration with universities, and the company should use part of its profit to support education in China, says Wang, an expert on computer-aided pattern recognition, such as the recognition of Chinese characters.