The campus, with two buildings offering 101,000 square meters of space, is expected to be completed in 2010 and will be the company's main overseas campus. About 5,000 employees will work at the facility.

    Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates had decided to build a research center in China after overseas revenues reached 60 percent of the total, which was in 2006, said Zhang Yaqin, board chairman of Microsoft China.

    Gates announced plans for the research facilities in China in April last year, Zhang said.

    Experts said the new action showed Microsoft's rising confidence in the Chinese market amid the Asian country's rapidly developing software market.

    Zhongguancun, known as Beijing's "Silicon Valley," was approved by the Chinese government as the first national level high-tech industrial development zone in 1988.

    The area houses thousands of high-tech companies, about 40 universities such as Peking University and more than 200 science institutions.