US automaker General Motors expects China to become an important export base toward emerging markets for it and other manufacturers, GM chairman Rick Wagoner was quoted Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal Europe as saying. "China is a natural" place to produce cars and components less expensively, Wagoner said in a interview in Shanghai, though he added that building GM cars in China for the US market would be a "relatively low priority".
Engines made in China by the state-owned Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, a joint venture with GM, are already shipped to assembly plants in Canada and the United States however.
GM, as with other US and European automakers, has been laying off workers and cutting production costs at home while looking to expand in countries where markets are growing and labor costs lower.
For now, most auto production in China is aimed at the rapidly growing domestic market, but countries or regions such as Russia, the Middle East and Africa are tipped to become buoyant markets in the future.
Wagoner also said GM was moving quickly to resolve its financial situation in the United States.
"We're moving at a pace that I think would shock people," he said, forecasting "a break-even or profitable" position soon in North America.
The group posted a loss of 115 million dollars in the third quarter of 2006, compared with a loss of 1.7 billion in the same period a year earlier.
Wagoner was in Shanghai during a visit by international business leaders, the newspaper said, and also presented a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell prototype car.
With the number of car owners rising rapidly in China and other Asian nations, "sustainability is becoming an ever more important challenge for our industry," he noted.
Source: Agence France-Presse
