Last Taiwan laptop maker shifts to China

Taiwan's laptop computer industry - once the world's largest - has closed its last assembly line and completed a massive relocation to rival China.

First International Computer Co. recently shut down its Taiwan factory, becoming the last Taiwanese laptop maker to move its production facilities to the Chinese mainland.

The company has sustained losses in the past few years as other Taiwanese makers churned out less expensive laptops in China, taking advantage of the mainland's lower labour and production costs.

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and political tensions still run high even as trade ties have boomed.

Taiwanese companies once produced up to 80 per cent of the world's laptop computers, but they have invested more than $US100 billion ($A130 billion) in China over the past two decades to maintain their competitive edge. Leading laptop makers such as Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics began producing in China several years ago.

Taiwan's semiofficial Institute for Information Industry has said that 73 per cent of Taiwanese computer makers' output came from their China factories last year.

Most of the computer makers have kept their research and development centres in Taiwan, but company executives say restrictions on hiring Chinese engineers may hamper their efforts to keep their bases on the island.