Two California-based telecommunications corporations were among the six leading US high-tech firms that recently signed contracts with several Chinese firms for $2.3 billion in equipment sales.

Intel, headquartered in Santa Clara, and San Jose-based Cisco Systems headed the list of contract awardees that includes Ericsson, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, and Nortel Networks.

The deals were signed with China Unicom, China Telecom, China Mobile, The Founder Corporation of Beijing University, and China Lenovo Group. The contract signing was the third in a series of deals that have been struck between US high-tech firms and Chinese partners since 2001 totaling some $4.8 billion in deals.