Not just cheap labour

From the Financial Times:

Intel, the world's largest microchip maker, is seeking to set up a $605m (€500m, £355m) plant in Vietnam to design, assemble and test chips, a project that would be a huge boost to the Communist-ruled country's fledgling high-tech industry....

In addition to the assembly and testing plant, Intel is also said to be interested in tapping Vietnamese engineers for the design and development of specialised embedded systems chips.

With a population of more than 80m and an economy that grew 8.4 per cent last year, Vietnam is south-east Asia's fastest-growing personal computer market, with ownership climbing to more than 1.5m this year from a mere 288,000 five years ago.

Domestic sales of computers and related products rose by about 30 per cent last year from 2004.