Move comes as competition among foreign chains increases

Britain's biggest retailer Tesco Plc announced on Friday it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the State-owned China Resources Enterprise for a joint venture agreement merging their Chinese operations, amid tough competition among foreign supermarket chains in the world's second-largest economy.

The proposed deal, which would represent a significant scaling down of the UK company's Chinese operations, will merge Tesco's 131 hypermarkets, supermarkets as well as shopping mall business in China with the Hong Kong-listed CRE's almost 3,000 stores.