Schwarzenegger announces Chinese contracts worth $3 billion with California corporations

Governor Schwarzenegger has issued a press release announcing that 11 major California corporations have signed contracts with Chinese businesses totaling more than $3 billion, and additional contracts will be signed later this week in Chicago. It is unclear from the press release whether these contracts had been jointly negotiated or why they were being jointly announced. Here is the full text of the press release:

Several California companies today signed contracts with Chinese businesses totaling more than $3 billion, with additional contracts for California employers to be signed later this week in Chicago. The contracts announced today are with 11 different California employers including Qualcomm, Applied Materials, HP, Oracle and CISCO.

Today at the State Capitol, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger met with Madam Xiuhong Ma, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce, and her delegation to thank her for encouraging Chinese companies to invest in California. During the meeting, Vice Minister Ma announced that the Chinese company Jiangxi Greatsource Display Technology Co., Ltd. will invest $95 million to build a research and development center in San Francisco.

“Since I’ve come into office, California has nearly doubled its sales to China. A key part of California’s economic success is export-led growth that recognizes the enormous potential outside California and the United States. The marketplace is now the whole world and that offers tremendous growth potential for our companies, but our competition is also worldwide. This means we must keep our costs under control, including our fast-growing healthcare costs, and make our infrastructure competitive and I will continue to travel the globe to promote California goods and services,” said Governor Schwarzenegger.

In November 2005, the Governor led a trade mission to China encouraging Chinese businesses to buy California products and invest in California. Since he took office California exports to China have grown 82.5%, and have grown by more than 27 % since the China trade mission.

In 2006, exports from California to China totaled almost $10 billion – almost doubling from $5.5 billion in 2003 when the Governor took office. California is the number one state in terms of total exports to China and top exports include computers and electronic products, waste and scrap materials, transportation equipment and heavy machinery.