Motorola Inc, Lucent Technologies Inc, Cisco Systems Inc and other suppliers won a total of US$2.3 billion in contracts to provide equipment for Chinese telephone companies, the US Commerce Department said.
China Mobile Communications Corp and China United Telecommunications Corp, or China Unicom, which are state-controlled, will buy US$1.07 billion worth of wireless-networking gear from Motorola, they said in statements. China Unicom and China Telecom Corp will buy US$350 million of Lucent equipment to upgrade data networks for Internet calling.
The contracts, signed in a ceremony in Washington, are among a series of recent such announcements by the Chinese government after US lawmakers have said China isn't doing enough to reduce the US$130 billion annual trade deficit. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, has said there's support for a bill to impose a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese imports.
Lucent, Motorola and Cisco are "vast and significant" suppliers in China and today's event was aimed at making a political statement by signing all the contracts at once, said Albert Lin, a San Francisco-based analyst at American Technology Research.
Intel Corp, UTStarcom Inc, Nortel Networks Corp and Ericsson AB also won contracts, the commerce department and company officials said. US Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, attended the ceremony, with Chinese government officials and company representatives.
Chinese companies bought US$8.5 billion of airplanes, cars, machinery and agricultural products in the US in November and last month.
Phone companies in China, the world's largest cellphone market, buy US$20.5 billion worth of wireline and wireless equipment each year from foreign and domestic suppliers, according to the Tele-communications Industry Association, a US trade group.
Cisco, the world's largest maker of equipment to link computers, signed agreements to supply gear to China Unicom and China Telecom, spokeswoman Penny Bruce said.
She declined to disclose the value of the contracts.
UTStarcom Inc, the biggest supplier of cordless-telephone equipment to China, signed a US$200 million contract to provide China Telecom with equipment for citywide wireless networks, UTStarcom spokeswoman Chesha Kamieniecki said.
Ericsson, the world's largest maker of mobile-phone networks, won a US$140 million order to expand the wireless network of China United Telecommunications Corp, the company said in a statement.
Intel signed a one-year agreement to sell microprocessors to Lenovo, a Beijing-based maker of personal computers and mobile-phone handsets formerly known as Legend Group Ltd, Intel spokeswoman Jennifer Greeson said. The company will not disclose the amount of the contract, she said.
Lucent, the largest US telephone equipment maker, will re-sell Juniper Networks Inc routers as part of its agreement with China Unicom, Juniper spokeswoman Susan Ursch said. She declined to disclose the value of the contract.
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