Digital China announced that it will set up a joint venture company with American storage giant EMC (EMC) to carry out solutions and services as well as acquisitions in China.

This is the first time that EMC has carried out a marketing and sales initiative in the Asia Pacific region by means of a joint venture.

Named Digital China Yi An Xin Information Technology Co., Ltd., the company will be registered in Hong Kong but will have offices in both Beijing and Hong Kong. All the registration will be done before the end of April. Each party will hold 50% of the stake in the company for which the parties have not disclosed the investment amount or employee numbers.

Ye Chenghui, president of EMC Greater China, says that the joint venture company will help EMC China R&D Center complete its local solutions and the testing and integration of EMC storage system and software. Ye says that these solutions will be pushed to market by EMC sales team and its partner network with Digital China providing the concerned IT service.

In recent years, global IT giants have begun to enhance their relationship with their Chinese partners by buying the partner's shares or setting up joint venture companies with them. This is one way they can stop their competitors from cooperating with their business partners.