Going Global

One of the major purposes for GE doing business in China is to create global partnerships based in China, Hutchinson said.

"We see Chinese companies are thinking about growing globally. GE is a kind of perfect partner. In our joint ventures in China we are innovating together with our Chinese partners and we are attacking global markets together," he said.

Over the past 12 months, GE formed 10 new partnerships with Chinese State-owned enterprises in key high-tech sectors. "We will do more joint ventures in China in the future," he added.

During Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the US earlier this year, GE signed four cooperation agreements with its Chinese partners in the fields of clean energy, aviation and rail transportation.

"These deals will help strengthen the critically important US-China bilateral economic relationship," said GE Vice-chairman John Rice in a statement.

Among those deals, GE energy cooperated with Shenhua Group Co to set up a joint venture and develop coal gasification technologies in China, a move that is key to commercial-scale deployment of cleaner coal solutions.

GE Aviation formed a partnership with Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to develop and market the new generation of avionics systems to support the development of China's first home-grown big passenger jet.

"These joint ventures are local-oriented but also global-oriented. They are all going to be global businesses," Hutchinson said.

Because the US is still the largest consumer market in the world, more Chinese companies are aiming to enter the market there. Hutchinson suggested they can learn from GE's experiences in China - firstly by building local partnerships in the targeted market.

"Encouraging Chinese companies to make investments in the US is an important direction for US-China bilateral cooperation. GE can play an active role in introducing Chinese partners to the US market," he said.

The economic relationship between China and the US still experiences an imbalance. Muhtar Kent, chairman of the US-China Business Council who also acts as chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, said China exports three times what it imports from the US.

At the same time, Chinese companies made only a small fraction of all investments in the US of about $5 billion, while US companies have invested about $100 billion in China, according to figures from the US-China Business Council.

However, Kent said in an earlier interview with China Daily that he was optimistic about economic cooperation between the two countries. "We believe both of those imbalances will get smaller in the next 10 years," Kent said.