China agreed Friday to buy 20 Airbus planes and a French satellite in two contracts signed in French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s Matignon Palace.
At the signing ceremony, seven other technical cooperation agreements were also inked, with the presence of Raffarin and visiting Chinese Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan after their talks.
The deals for 20 Airbus A330-200 planes and the French-made Alcatel television satellite are valued at more than 2 billion US dollars, according to industrial sources.
The 20 Airbus jumbo jets are scheduled to be delivered to Chinafrom the first quarter of 2006.
Pascale Sourisse, president of Alcatel Space, a subsidiary of the French telecommunications group Alcatel, said his company had agreed to sell a satellite to Chinasat, a Chinese satellite operator preparing for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Electricity of France signed with a Chinese company a letter of intent concerning technical cooperation in building a nuclear power plant in southern China’s Guangdong province.
Other deals signed in the ceremony included a technology transfer program of high-speed electric trains between French engineering group Alstom and China’s Datong Electric Locomotive Company.
