China's nine top operators in the information industry signed Thursday an agreement to form a mobilemultimedia technological union in order to combat fierce international competition.

"The nine members represent leading research and development institutions, telecommunication operators, terminal and network facility manufacturers and chips suppliers in China's IT industry," said Jiang Lintao, chairman of the executive council of the union.

The union will focus on improving of the industry's innovation ability and laying a base for the establishment of the country's industry standards so as to enhance the competitiveness of China'sIT industry in the world, Jiang said.

Boasting the biggest number of mobile phone users in the world,China is still far from a mobile telecom power because many core technologies, industry standards and intellectual property rights are controlled by multinational companies.

A research report of International Data Co. predicts that by 2007 there would be nearly 400 million cell phones supported by multimedia technologies and the market value would reach 76 billion US dollars. Currently, one-third of mobile phones worldwide are made in China.

"So China has enough reasons to have its voice heard when international industry standards are set," said Jiang.

As a non-governmental organization, the union will be open to research and development institutions and enterprises both at homeand overseas.

The nine initiators are the Academy of Telecommunications Research under the Ministry of Information Industry, China Telecommunications Corp. (China Telecom), China Network Communications Group Corp. (China Netcom), China Mobile Communications Corp. (China Mobile), China United Telecommunications Corp. (China Unicom), China Putian Corporation,Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corporation, and Vimicro Corporation.