Like many places in China, Dongying city has changed a lot in five years. Its 2009 fiscal revenue topped 8 billion yuan. More importantly, the local economy is transforming from petrochemical-dependent to include more sustainable industries especially renewable energy.

Dongying has attracted wind power, solar, and geothermal energy firms from both domestic and abroad, including Datang, Huaneng, Saertex, and Nordex, just to name a few.

At the Yellow River Delta trade talk last month, Dongying secured more than 80 billion yuan of investment from petrochemical, automotive and wind power industries. "Compared to the current volume of investment inflow, DuPont's investment is not as much as it sounded five years," the Economic Observer News commented.

Chinese news media have reported various versions of the investment amount, anywhere from 1 billion yuan to 4.7 billion yuan, but DuPont said the total investment is expected to exceed $1 billion (6.8 billion yuan), according to a position statement on its Web site.

DuPont is the world's largest manufacturer of titanium dioxide, a white pigment widely used in the coatings, plastics and paper industries.