The comment by Mr Lou Qinjian, vice-minister of the Ministry of Information Industry, is welcome news for foreign equipment vendors worried that Beijing might force the market to adopt a homegrown standard that rivals USn and European standards.

"Companies ought to determine it for themselves," Mr Lou told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference on next-generation wireless technology. "The ministry of Information Industry requires only that they choose common international standards," he said. "As for which standard an operator chooses specifically, that is for the market to determine."

Future, or so-called "third generation", wireless technologies are designed to deliver ingenious new services to mobile phones, such as high-speed Internet access and video conferencing.

Some markets in Europe and Asia are poised to begin rolling out third-generation phone networks as early as next year, using a patchwork of competing technical standards.

Strong contenders include WCDMA, which has the backing of several European and North American equipment makers, and CDMA 2000, which is being pushed by US-based Qualcomm Inc. But the Chinese government, with help from Siemens AG of Germany, has put considerable money and effort into developing its own standard, called TD-SCDMA.

If TD-SCDMA is adopted by phone companies, state-owned Chinese equipment makers would stand to earn hefty sums from royalties and equipment contracts. In a boost for the standard, foreign equipment makers Motorola Inc and Nortel Networks announced last week they would help China develop TD-SCDMA. The firms are also developing WCDMA and CDMA 2000 technology.