The French government plans to install 1,000 businesses next year in China, declared French Junior Minister of Foreign Trade Francois Loos on Tuesday.

"We are going to take businesses next year to several major trade fairs and will go, we hope, with 1,000 new companies to discover potential markets," said Loos, adding that France is not sufficiently presented in China.

"There are 3,500 French companies exporting to China and 250 installed in China. If we look at the potential, we see that in three years there should be 7,000," he said.

According to him, it will be notably small and medium-sized enterprises.

He hoped to take another 3,500 companies to China and to this end it ought to mobilize numerous Chambers of Commerce and Industry and regional councils, he said.

French businesses currently hold about 1.4 percent of the Chinese market, compared to 2.7 percent five years ago.

French President Jacques Chirac will take with him some 50 leaders of French companies, including 17 small and medium-sized businesses, in his state visit to China.

He told the leaders of the 17 small and medium-sized businesses last week that economic ties between France and China are worthy being developed.

"My big ambition would be that the quantity of small and medium-sized businesses can be doubled in China" to 7,000 in 2007 from today's 3,700, Chirac said.