DuPont Co., which flourished selling paint to Detroit automakers and electronic materials to Silicon Valley technology companies, said yesterday that it was moving its "center of gravity" to where the business is - China, India, and Eastern Europe.

The Wilmington-based company announced plans to cut $900 million in costs over the next two years by reducing its workforce, streamlining its product lines, and consolidating manufacturing and support services.

"We see very clearly as we're coming out of this recession that the customer base ... is shifting even more rapidly than most people projected" to those lower-cost regions of the world, DuPont's chief executive officer, Charles O. Holliday Jr., said during a conference call with investors. While none of its division headquarters will be moved overseas, he said, "we must play the new game by having our resources close to these customers."

The number of job reductions associated with the restructuring will not be announced until April 27, when the company releases its first-quarter earnings.

DuPont, which invented nylon, Teflon, Lycra and hundreds of other products that go into clothing, buildings and automobiles, employs 9,900 in Delaware and 78,000 worldwide. It also operates major factories in Towanda, Pa.; Parlin, N.J.; and the Chambers Works in Deepwater, Salem County, N.J. Its only Philadelphia unit is Marshall Laboratories.

In the early 1990s, DuPont had more than 130,000 employees worldwide, including 19,000 in Delaware, where it has been a dominant force in politics, commerce and culture.

While DuPont is intensifying its efforts in China, other Philadelphia-area companies have also expanded manufacturing there in the last few years, including Rohm & Haas Co., which has seven plants there now, up from one a decade ago.

"We will be moving the center of gravity of this company to places like China, India, and Eastern and Central Europe, and other emerging markets," Holliday said.

DuPont would hire local workers in foreign markets and would likely move some high-ranking managers overseas, Holliday said. The company has no plans to move the headquarters of any of its five operating segments abroad, he said.

City officials in Wilmington, where 201-year-old DuPont has been the premier corporate citizen for a century, interpreted yesterday's announcement as a sign that DuPont was trying to become stronger and more competitive.

"These business decisions appear at this time to be encouraging news for Wilmington and Delaware. As the company strengthens itself, it's good news for us," said John Rago, communications director for Mayor James M. Baker.

However, Bob Gurecki, who has worked at the Chambers Works for nearly 31 years and has seen union membership there fall from 8,000 to 650, had a different reaction: "They are basically sticking a fork in all the people who got them where they are."

About $200 million of the expected cost savings are related to the planned sale of Invista, DuPont's textiles and fibers unit, to Koch Industries Inc. for $4.4 billion. That deal, which will reduce DuPont's workforce by 18,000 people, was announced on Nov. 18.

If completed by the middle of next year as expected, it would be DuPont's third multibillion-dollar sale of a major division since 1999. As a result, the company's revenue has fallen from a peak of $45 billion in 1997 to roughly $20 billion last year, excluding the businesses that Koch is buying.

The divestitures are part of Holliday's plan to rid DuPont of commodity-based and energy-intensive businesses in favor of higher growth and returns in areas such as biotechnology, electronics and nutrition.

Analysts applauded the sale of Invista and yesterday's restructuring announcement.

"I believe that $900 million is aggressive but certainly achievable over the next couple of years," said Gene Pisasale, a senior investment officer with Wilmington Trust Co.

Shares of DuPont, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, closed at $42.70, up $1.24, or 3 percent, yesterday.

Holliday confirmed the importance of China to global manufacturers, calling it a "can't-miss country." Potential DuPont customers, such as Motorola Inc. and Volkswagen AG, have plans to invest billions in factories there.

China is the only major country where DuPont's sales have grown in each of the last two years, reaching $681 million last year from $487 million in 2000. Sales in China are expected to be up by about 30 percent this year.

The American Chemistry Council expects overall demand for chemicals to be strongest in China and East Asia and increase by at least 7 percent a year through 2007.

DuPont started doing business in China in the mid-1980s. Since then, it has invested more than $700 million there, opening 22 locations. Last month, the company broke ground on a $15 million corporate research and development facility near Shanghai.

Holliday said he expected all of DuPont's businesses to expand in China. In particular, he said, "we are making major moves to serve the automobile industry," which is expanding more rapidly in China than anywhere else in the world. To keep up, DuPont is expanding its electronics, coatings and engineered polymers.

The movement of electronics production to China is also picking up speed, Holliday said.

Holliday, who managed DuPont's Asian businesses for six years in the early and mid-1990s, said global competition had fundamentally changed. When he was in Asia, there were only a few "companies that would find ways to take costs to a fundamentally lower level," he said.

Such companies are no longer the exception, he said. "The mass buyers at retail... are clearly changing the name of the game."