China firms buy $2.3B worth of U.S. high technology

China firms buy $2.3B worth of U.S. high technology Motorola and Lucent win large telecommunications deals at trade seminar

Major players in China's IT and telecommunication industries signed deals Tuesday to buy equipment from U.S. vendors worth a total of around $2.3 billion, the companies said. The deals were signed at a seminar on telecommunications and IT trade in Washington.

Motorola Inc. won two large mobile telephony deals: a $556 million contract with China United Telecommunication Corp. (China Unicom) to expand its CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile networks in Beijing and 12 other provinces; and a $510 million contract with China Mobile Communications Corp. to expand its GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) network and improve data services in Beijing and 13 provinces, Motorola said in statements.

The two mobile carriers also awarded contracts worth $350 million to Lucent Technologies Inc. in the area of packet-switched networking and advanced multimedia communications services, Lucent said in a statement.

The two carriers also signed contracts with Cisco Systems Inc., the U.S.-based Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) said. PC manufacturers Legend Group Ltd. and Founder Group signed deals with Intel. Other U.S. companies that signed deals were UTStarcom Inc. and Nortel Networks Inc., TIA said.

China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Lou Qinjian, Vice Minister of China's Ministry of Information Industry, as saying that the deals demonstrated China's sincerity in addressing the trade imbalance between the two sides, which the U.S. estimates to be around $125 billion in 2003

The two countries should work together to solve the issues of trade imbalance by establishing a mechanism of communication and cooperation, rather than imposing restrictions on trade, Xinhua quoted Lou as saying.

US General Myers shown secretive space centre on red carpet visit to China

BEIJING (AFP) Jan 14, 2004
China's military Wednesday rolled out the red carpet for visiting US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, who was allowed a rare visit to the nation's secretive space control center.
Myers, the highest level military officer to visit since ties nose-dived three years ago, was given an honor guard welcome as he met his counterpart General Liang Guanglie, chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

A 40-piece military band performed the two national anthems in front of the Defense Ministry ahead of scheduled talks between the two military leaders.

"China has all along taken a positive attitude toward the development of Sino-US military relations," Liang was quoted by Xinhua news agency as telling Myers.

"We hope to make efforts with the US side to further the development of forward looking, healthy and stable military relations as an increasingly active element of overall constructive and cooperative Sino-US relations."

During talks Liang also laid out China's "principled position on Taiwan" and warned the US against selling weapons to the island that Beijing has vowed to reunify, through force, if necessary.

"The Taiwan issue is the most sensitive issue in Chinese-US relations," Liang said in earshot of journalists.

"We firmly oppose any arms sales by the United States to Taiwan."

When the US established relations with China in 1979, it also passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which calls on the US to provide for the defense of the island terrority.

Sino-US military ties plummeted when a US surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter in mid-air nearly three years ago in the South China Sea and no high-ranking US military official has been to China since.

The Chinese pilot was killed and the crippled EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing at an airbase on China's Hainan island, where the plane's crew was held for 11 days.

The ice was broken during a visit to Washington last October by China's Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan during which he met Myers and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"As two big nations in the Asia-Pacific region, maintaining good relations between the militaries of the United States and China is very important to the maintenance of international and regional stability," Xinhua quoted Meyers as saying in translation.

"Faced with a new international security environment, the two militaries can open up cooperation in many areas," he added.

Besides Liang and Cao, Myers was also to meet with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and could possibly pay a courtesy call on President Hu Jintao, Chinese media said.

On Wednesday, he toured the mission control center of China's space program, which in October was at the heart of China's first-ever manned space flight, the Shenzhou V, the China Daily said on its website.

Myers party was the first foreign delegation to visit the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, or "Beijing Space City" as it is known in Chinese, and viewed a video-taped presentation of the flight of astronaut Yang Liwei.

Defense ministry officials told AFP that military-to-military relations would be the main topic of the visit, but they did not discount the possibilty of the North Korean nuclear crisis also featuring.

China's active participation in the global war on terror and its efforts to broker six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions have won praise from Washington.

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