A group of Chinese investors banded together last autumn and spent $1.9bn on acquiring OmniVision Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based semiconductor company.

The deal was one of the first to show that flows across the Pacific, especially in the tech sector, are now two-way flows. Even as Silicon Valley looks for the next idea to take to the world’s biggest mobile internet and ecommerce market, Chinese investors are making increasingly significant investments in the US to compensate for weakness back home. Beijing has invested heavily in creating semiconductor manufacturing capacity on the mainland but that capacity has been underutilised, hampered by a lack of high quality chip designers. By acquiring OmniVision, which designs and makes chips for the image sensors used in cameras (including the iPhone), the group is acquiring human capital that will make China ever more competitive in high-end manufacturing.

Moreover, the Chinese investors, which include Hua Capital Management, Citic Capital and GoldStone Investment, have a plan to ensure the acquisition makes financial as well as economic sense. Ultimately, they plan to take OmniVision, which was listed in the US, and relist it back in China. That is because semiconductor companies are out of favour in the US, while the Chinese love the sector.