French PM meets with Chinese Vice Premier

French President Jacques Chirac will visit China in autumn to mark the opening of the French Year in China, announced Friday French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin after talks with Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan.

The French president's visit is scheduled at the beginning of October, nine months after Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to France, and will be officially announced later in the day during the meeting between Chirac and Zeng at the presidential palace of Elysee.

"It is very important to prepare President Chirac's visit to China in Autumn after receiving the Chinese president (in Paris)," Raffarin said.

"If each time we meet we sign as many agreements with so many jobs behind these agreements, I believe our cooperation with China will be very fruitful. It already is," Raffarin said after the signings of nine contracts and agreements worth billions of dollars between Chinese and French companies.

Airbus announced it had inked a two-billion-dollar worth deal to supply 20 medium and long-haul A330-300 planes to the China Eastern airline.

Alcatel Space, aerospace subsidiary of the French telecommunications group Alcatel, said it had sold a 120-million-dollar television satellite to the Chinese company Chinasat for the sake of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

The Electricity of France (EDF) 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.