China and Korea team up for wireless fund

The municipal government of Shanghai and the South Korean Ministry of Information and Communications will announce today (Friday) sponsorship of a fund to invest up to $50 million into wireless technology ventures in China. The fund will enjoy an initial seeding of $30 million from Korea's MoIC – representing the ministry's inaugural investment offshore – and its managers will then seek additional investments from private companies.

The fund will be jointly managed by a Chinese and a Korean fund manager. Shanghai has already appointed Hong Kong-based DragonTech Ventures as a manager; DragonTech is the venture arm of Shanghai Industrial Investment (Holdings). Korea's MoIC currently has an open tender for a Korean fund manager.

Roman Shao, CEO at DragonTech in Hong Kong, says the fund's objective will be to stimulate a technology transfer between South Korea, which boasts some of the world's cutting edge CDMA wireless companies and technologies, and China, which has recently overtaken the United States as the world's largest wireless population. It comes as China Unicom is preparing a nationwide rollout of CDMA wireless standards.

Details of the fund will be presented today in Hong Kong.