Tengtu International has announced that its Beijing subsidiary, the largest supplier of educational software for China's elementary and secondary schools, has signed an agreement with Microsoft to help popularize the Office productivity package.

Tengtu, which provides education software and distance-learning services to more than 35,000 Chinese schools, with 17.5 million students, has said it will develop an "Education Resource Kit for Office" to integrate the company's educational software and services with Microsoft's Office 2003. Tengtu was selected by the country's Ministry of Education to run the main education portal and distance-learning network for the national school system.

Office is one of Microsoft's most significant profit centers, but the franchise has come under increasing pressure from the free, open-source OpenOffice.org package, especially in developing nations.