According to the recent reports of Time magazine, China and India are the most world's most polluted countries. It is said that the future growth of the market share of the southern China and the east region will be limited as the main growth of PCB will focus on the inland cities of China's western part.
In order to protect environment, Chinese government has already started to carry out strict regulation in environmental protection, which also influences the whole PCB industry. Many cities are not allowed to build and expand PCB plants, such as Shenzhen. Dongguan City has specifically designated four towns to be the production base of "polluting industries", forbidding the polluting industries to build new plants outside the designated areas. These policies are an unfavorable factor that influences the development of the PCB industry in China.
The fast increase in wage level is another factor that hinders the growth of the PCB industry in China. It is said that although Japanese PCB manufacturers are still investing in China, some of the investments have been transferred to Thailand and Vietnam as the salary level in Thailand is similar to China, while the minimum wage in Vietnam is only half of the minimum limit in the southern part of China and one third of the Shanghai area.
Some areas which are considered to be impossible to expand their industrial areas and plants are establishing many new plants and expand their production capacity. And one of the key problems existing in those new PCB projects is how to handle wastewater. For example, PCB maker Meiko Electronics' new plant in Wuhan City, Hubei Province has been put into operation, but before carrying out the expansion of its second phase and third phase, Meiko Electronics announced that it will invest 35 billion yen (about $305 million) to build a new PCB plant in the west of Vietnam's capital Hanoi.