The Mozilla Foundation has established Mozilla China, an affiliate and non-profit organization that will help develop and promote open-source Mozilla software in China.

Mozilla China is being backed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Software, and Sun Microsystems. The group will be co-chaired by Gong Li, general manager of Sun China's Engineering and Research Institute, and Li Mingshu, of the Institute of Software, Mozilla said in a statement Friday. Li and Gong will sit on the Mozilla China steering committee alongside Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation, it said.

Mozilla's open-source software is used in products including the Firefox and Camino Web browsers and the Thunderbird e-mail client.

Mozilla China is the third international Mozilla affiliate to be established, the statement said. The other two are Mozilla Europe and Mozilla Japan. Mozilla China will be responsible for development of the Chinese version of the Mozilla Web site and discussion forums and will lead the development of Mozilla source code in China, it said.

Sun aims to play a major role in the development of Mozilla source code in China and has established a Mozilla browser development team in Beijing, Gong said in the statement.