Thousands of jobs and lots of money in exports – according to General Electric, that’s the payoff for the U.S. economy from five joint ventures the company plans to do with Chinese partners.
GE’s announcement of the impending agreements coincided with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington, during which cleantech cooperation between the world economic leader and its aggressive challenger was a focal point.
All total, these deals reportedly are worth more than $2 billion in revenue for GE. They are also expected to generate more than $1 billion in exports from the U.S. and create or support jobs in both countries, including more than 4,500 U.S. jobs.
Not all the new GE-China business will be in cleantech, but the deals include work on coal gasification technologies, high-speed rail and combined heat and power projects.
That last item is the single largest piece of the announced deals; GE said at least 50 ultra-efficient natural gas-turbine generator sets will be sold and installed in China in the next five years, resulting in $350 million in U.S. exports from Cincinnati, Houston, Colorado and Oregon and supporting more than 2,100 jobs in GE’s U.S. supply chain.
The high-speed rail deal announcement was actually the reaffirmation of an agreement between the two companies dating back to December 2010.
GE said it and China’s CSR Corporation will establish a joint venture in the United States to supply trains for the new high-speed rail planned for California and Florida, creating 250 jobs by 2012 in its first phase.
The coal venture, targeted at developing gasification technologies in China, will boost job creation in Houston, Greenville, S.C., and Schenectady, N.Y., GE said.
