TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan's government approved plans by four chip testing and packaging firms to invest in China, an official said Thursday, as the country further eases long-standing restrictions on high-tech investment in its communist rival.
Advanced Semiconductor—the world's largest chip testing and packaging firm by revenue—has received the go ahead to take a 60 percent stake in a Chinese unit owned by the Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors, said Fan Liang-Tung, executive secretary of Taiwan's Investment Commission.
NXP will hold the remaining 40 percent of the chip unit in Suzhou, eastern China, which is valued at $21.6 million, Fan said.
Three other Taiwanese firms—Siliconware Precision, Greatek Electronics, and Walton Advanced Engineering—were also given approval to run chip packaging or testing operations on the mainland, Fan said.
Taiwan strictly regulates investments by the island's technology firms in China, its political rival, and bars the companies from using the latest process technologies in their Chinese facilities.
Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949. Since then Beijing has repeatedly threatened to attack if Taipei makes its de facto independence permanent.