WASHINGTON-Motorola Inc. today signed deals totaling $1.1 billion with China’s top mobile-phone carriers, and other U.S. wireless firms picked up multimillion contracts in the world’s largest wireless market. The transactions come at a time of rising trade tensions between the two countries.
In all, $2.3 billion in deals-most wireless-were announced at a signing ceremony here at a U.S.-China seminar on prospects for cooperation in the telecom and information-technology sectors. Lucent Technologies Inc. snagged $350 million worth of contracts with China Unicom and China Telecom.
Other contracts with China were picked up by Intel Corp., UTStarcom Inc., Nortel Networks Ltd., Cisco Systems Inc. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. Motorola’s $556 million contract with China Unicom is geared to upgrade the operator’s GSM networks and contribute to the expansion of its 1x CDMA wireless systems. The Schaumburg, Ill., company’s $510 million pact with China Mobile Communication Corp., the nation’s biggest cell-phone operator, will help build out the carrier’s GSM systems and improve data services in Beijing and 13 provinces.
The event, which drew Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and Chinese officials from government and industry, follows high-level talks in recent months between Bush administration and Chinese authorities on trade and other issues.
In December, the U.S. Trade Representative sent Congress a report saying China has failed to implement market-opening reforms required by World Trade Organization membership. While administration officials said U.S. exports to China are increasing, America’s trade deficit with China is now more than $125 billion.
However, with the business opportunities in China arguably greater than anywhere in the world, the Bush administration has largely avoided caustic rhetoric about the staggering trade imbalance with China, the yen valuation and other fractious issues.
But in the domestic arena, seeing that the U.S. economic recovery is not producing jobs this election year, the White House has been forced to give the U.S.-China trade issues higher priority.
