Having built two regional headquarters in Shanghai and Beijing, respectively, General Electric (GE) will soon set up five new regional headquarters in Shenyang, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and Guangzhou.

The new headquarters will be used to help GE's existing functional departments in different regions of China to further explore the Chinese market and to develop more China-oriented products.

Chen Xiangli, president of China Technology Center under GE, says that the move is in line with GE's new strategy of making China the second homeland of the company. In the future, China will become an important research and development base and a fundamental foothold for GE instead of merely being a market for the international giant.

To accelerate the implementation of its new strategy in the Chinese market, GE invested USD15 million in its research and development center in China in 2007 and the company continues to invest over USD40 million to develop new products for China such as clean energy, water processing, nano material, semiconductor light source and hybrid locomotive. In addition, CE plans to enhance cooperation with Chinese SMEs by merge and acquisition to promote its development in China.