Sino-French co-operation strengthens
By Xie Ye and Liu Baijia (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-10-11 08:38

Business co-operation between Chinese and French companies is growing steadily, as the two countries aim to promote their partnership to new heights during French President Jacques Chirac's visit to China.

China Huaneng Group, one of the nation's five largest electricity suppliers, established a strategic partnership on Saturday with Electricite de France, Europe's largest company supplier and exporter, to jointly tap China's growing power market.

The two companies will focus on technology co-operation, information exchange and construction of power plants.

Other co-operation areas include human resources and personnel training, technology services and project consultancies.

Huaneng President Li Xiaopeng said on Saturday at the signing ceremony that the partnership marks a "new era" in the history of 20-year co-operation between the two companies.

Pierre Gadonneix, chairman and CEO of EDF, said the strategic alliance was significant for the company's development in China as the Chinese power market is booming.

China's power generation has increased by more than 15 per cent during the past two years, and is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. Facing potential power shortages, the government has decided to build more 35,000-megawatt power projects.

Gadonneix says that a major focus of co-operation will be on clean energy such as hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and renewable energy.

The French company has had a long-term presence in China's power market, especially in the nuclear and hydropower sectors.

Meanwhile, the company is also providing technology consultancy to Chinese hydropower projects.

EDF, though a consortium with French Alstom, won China's first BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) power plant the Figlec power plant in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 1997.

The French computer and information technology (IT) solutions company Bull is also poised to boost its presence in the world's most populous market with partnerships and expanding of its business scope.

Gervais Pellissier, acting chairman and managing director of Bull, said only about 3 per cent of Bull's total revenues are generated in the China market, despite the fact that the company has been operational in China for almost 20 years.

"We hope this situation will change soon," said Pellissier in an interview yesterday.

He said Bull's focus would be on high-end computer servers and IT solutions.

The French firm formed an alliance with the biggest Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group on Saturday to develop the high-end computer server market.

Bull will provide its NovaScale 5000 and 6000 server series and FAME technology to Lenovo to enable the latter to make high-performance servers. Lenovo will sell the products in China and provide services to the products.

The products will target scientific computing and large enterprise applications.

Pellissier said he believed Lenovo's strong brand, distribution network and manufacturing capability would help the company win a significant share of the market of Intel architecture-based servers, with a value over US$100,000 per unit.

He said Lenovo's manufacturing facility would also be a help in developing other markets in Asia.

As well, Bull aims to provide IT solutions to government, taxation and customs sectors based on its strong position in these areas in Europe.

Besides winning contracts in China, Bull's China operation will also export software solutions to European governments.

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