Airbus Lands $1.5-Billion China Contract

BEIJING — In a sign that Boeing Co. faces an increasingly powerful competitor in Asia, Airbus Industrie of Europe announced a $1.5-billion contract Thursday to supply China with 30 more civilian aircraft by 2000.

The deal far eclipses Boeing’s $685-million contract with China, signed in March, for five of its Boeing 777 jetliners. Indeed, Thursday’s deal brings to $3 billion the value of Airbus sales to China within the last two years, nearly double those of the Seattle-based Boeing.

The Airbus sale also bolsters speculation that Boeing’s pending merger with McDonnell Douglas Corp.--though opposed by Airbus on antitrust grounds--would actually work to the benefit of the European company in the all-important Far East, where Asian customers would support Airbus to keep competition alive.

When the merger is complete, Boeing and Airbus will be the world’s only major aircraft makers. Boeing has a 2-1 lead in China over Airbus, and had enjoyed a virtual lock in China after President Nixon flew to Beijing on a Boeing 707 in 1972 to open U.S.-China relations.

But the Airbus contract was also a political statement. China awarded the Airbus deal just a month after France helped quash a U.N. resolution that would have censured China’s human rights record.

Much as the smaller Boeing sale was announced during Vice President Al Gore’s China visit in March, the Airbus deal was announced during the visit of French President Jacques Chirac, who presided at a ceremony with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Chirac, whose country is home to the Airbus consortium, has eagerly courted Beijing to gain a stronger foothold in China’s booming economy and to diminish U.S. domination of world politics and trade.

“Today’s contract is an additional strong vote of confidence by our Chinese customers,” Airbus Managing Director Jean Pierson said in a prepared statement. The deal includes an order for 10 of the European consortium’s A320 planes and 20 of its A321s, models well-suited to domestic flights in China and regional trips in Asia.

In addition to its $3 billion in recent China orders, Airbus signed an agreement in December with China Aviation Co. and Singaporean aviation interests to develop a 100-seat aircraft called the AE 100.

The plane orders and collaboration with Airbus mark a departure for Beijing, which has been buying 70% of its planes from Boeing. China is the world’s biggest single airplane market and it is expected to grow dramatically.

Airbus’ latest success here is also a feather in the cap for Chirac, whose center-right political party is in the midst of an intensifying general election campaign back home. In a sign of China’s growing political and economic importance to Paris, Chirac’s four-day trip to the world’s most populous nation is the longest state visit he has made to any country since taking office two years ago.

France, which ranks 13th among China’s suppliers, “doesn’t fully have the place it deserves to have here,” Chirac told reporters and French business people Thursday.

“This laid a very good foundation for further cooperation between our two countries in the political field,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang said. “Good political relations . . . will advance economic ties.”

Chirac, who traveled here with more than 50 French corporate executives, also sounded a theme increasingly popular in Beijing and Moscow: the need to establish a “multipolar” world--a slap at Washington’s status as the world’s sole superpower.