Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce will lead a trade delegation to China this week in a bid to build the presence of New Zealand companies in the rapidly growing Chinese ICT (information, communications and technology) mark
Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce will lead a trade delegation to China this week in a bid to build the presence of New Zealand companies in the rapidly growing Chinese ICT (information, communications and technology) market.
"China’s ICT market is vast. They have more than 420 million internet users, 823 million mobile phone users, and 277 million mobile phone internet users," Mr Joyce said.
"This mission aims to help further develop long-term, sustainable relationships with key Chinese agencies and companies operating in the ICT sector.
The delegation will visit Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen from 17–22 October.
It is the sixth ministerial-led mission to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo this year.
Senior management from some of New Zealand's leading ICT companies are represented on the mission, including American-owned 2degrees (a customer of Huawei's cellular base stations and other gear), 4RF Communications, home-gown IT services giant Datacom, Mako Networks, Mobile Mentor; Mobilis Networks; the part-Kiwi-owned Navman Wireless, Open Cloud, New Zealand's largest software company, Orion Health; Pingar, a Kiwi search engine entering the Chinese market; Tomizone, the Auckland company whose transaction software is installed at 10,000 hotspots in China; and the New Zealand ICT Group.
Huawei hook-up
During the mission Mr Joyce will meet with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and key telecommunications companies in Beijing, spend a day at the World Expo and address a Kiwi Expat Association (KEA) function in Shanghai and visit Huawei’s research and development facility in Shenzhen.
Critics will note that Huawei - a prime ministerial favourite - is actually trying to sell New Zealand companies stuff rather than receive our exports.
But closer contacts can hurt. Huawei recently expanded a deal with an Australian company which is actually managing to sell components to the China tech giant.
Mr Joyce leaves for China tonight.
