With $17 billion in U.S. exports in 2010, GE is the nation’s second largest manufacturing exporter. GE makes the world’s most advanced energy, aviation, healthcare and transportation technology, at plants across the U.S., and sells these products all over the world. In the last ten years alone, GE has doubled its exports from the U.S., which has supported American jobs. In the last ten years, revenue from outside of the U.S. has grown from 35 percent of GE’s total in 2001 to a projected 60 percent in 2011, while more than 50% of the company’s industrial workforce remains in the U.S.

GE Aviation Joint Venture in China

A recent story in the Washington Post examined a joint venture between GE Aviation and the Aviation Industry Corporation of China involving avionics technology. GE started doing business in China in 1906; it’s not a new direction for the company. China’s civil aviation market is one of the fastest growing in the world and has enormous potential for continuing growth. It is a key imperative for GE and the U.S. to participate in this growth.

The Post story accurately states that the partnership will create hundreds of jobs in the United States, which will mainly be in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Clearwater, Florida. In all, GE Aviation’s business in China translates to more than 1,800 high-tech jobs in the U.S.

GE has ensured that rigorous protections are in place to protect our intellectual property. The partnership will create new technologies, and both parties have every interest in protecting intellectual property, which will be a key asset of the venture. This is purely a commercial avionics venture and involves no military applications.

GE Healthcare X-Ray Division

At the end of July, GE Healthcare announced it would move 4 executives of the X-Ray Division to China to lead the development of specific products for use in China. Subsequent media reports inaccurately described the announcement – GE is not moving its entire X-Ray Division to China. The team on the ground in China will develop X-Ray products suited to the specific needs of the Chinese market: for example, Chinese hospitals in rural markets require very basic products. This on the ground business development will help support jobs at home.

GE’s overall business in China—across all divisions—will support nearly 4,500 American jobs, including those along GE’s U.S. supply chain.

For more on GE’s manufacturing expansion in the U.S., check out our “Jobs” section, and our map showing locations in the U.S. where GE has announced over 8,000 new jobs in the last 18 months.

China’s not the only market with large gas production figures. Check out our infographics below for a look at increasing gas production in the U.S. and a guide to where the gas is worldwide, and which countries are producing the most of it.

The GE-sponsored weekly technology magazine, The Txchnologist, visualizes increasing production and decreasing reliance on imports of gas in the U.S., likely leading to increased exports to Europe and Japan.

GE’s Data Visualization team examines where gas reserves are, who’s producing the most, who’s consuming the most and how the remaining life of gas compares to oil and coal.

*Trademark of the General Electric Company

One of the deals is the coal gasification joint venture that’s been formed between GE and Shenhua Group to sell and develop gasification technology and advance the deployment of “cleaner coal” solutions in China. Tied to that effort is GE’s 1,400-person strong China Technology Center in Shanghai, which has been tapping into the country’s homegrown scientific talent since it was launched in 2000.

We checked in with GE’s Shanghai lab, which recently ran a post about the China team’s cleaner coal work on the lab’s new Chinese language blog.

Over 70 percent of China’s power supply is generated by burning coal, which is why the lab is looking at ways to optimize what’s known as “integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology.” In an IGCC plant, coal is heated to high temperature to create a synthesis gas or syngas, which is then processed to remove many emissions. An extra set of technologies also cool the gas, with the resulting steam used to power a turbine and produce additional electricity (that’s the “combined cycle” part).

Although the technology is in use at some power plants, research teams are looking for ways to bring down the cost and improve efficiency. One critical area of R&D for the Shanghai lab involves the first step of the gasification process itself — preparing a coal water slurry. If the concentration of coal in the slurry can be increased, the efficiency goes up, too.

The scientists at the “Coal Poly-generation Laboratory” in the Shanghai lab are tackling it from two directions. “The first method is particle size distribution; that is, to mix the coal of different particle sizes for the preparation of a coal slurry,” they write. The idea is to find new ways to let small coal particles enter the void between large coal particles. By mixing the particles at a certain percentage, the slurry becomes more concentrated.

The second route involves experimenting with additives that can change the viscosity of coal water slurry — so that it remains fluid, even with a relatively high concentration of coal.

The scientists are also figuring out ways to address the wide variation in coal quality around the world, as it’s “impossible for a low ranking coal of poor quality to produce a coal water slurry at high concentration.” The Shanghai team developed what they call a “dry powder transmission” technology for lower quality coal. It essentially grinds coal into coal powder and then transmits it into the gasification furnace under high pressure.

Brain power: The joint venture between GE Energy and Shenhua Group Corporation to develop coal gasification technologies in China is one of the keys to commercial-scale deployment of cleaner coal solutions. The collaboration is expected to generate more than $150 million in revenues over five years and $100 million of U.S. exports in services, R&D and licensing. It will also support job creation in the United States and China, including hundreds of jobs in Houston, Greenville, SC; and Schenectady, NY.

* Read an English translation of the full blog post
* See a video explaining how the cleaner coal technology is working at the Polk Power Station in Tampa, Fla. in our story: “A cleaner path to coal: The ABCs of IGCC technology”
* Learn about a new IGCC plant in California and one in Indiana.
* See a recent photo contest held at our lab in China

For a week each January, the World Economic Forum convenes its Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, attended by a broad assortment of global leaders — from government, industry, civil society, media. Some come to network, some to do deals on the sidelines, some to lobby, and some — as one candid fellow attendee confessed to me — just “to see and be seen.”

Karan Bhatia

The real purpose of Davos, however, is to discuss the pressing challenges that confront the world, in a series of discussion sessions on topics ranging from “the future of employment” to “national innovation.” And that, to my mind, is the real value of Davos. Like the Silk Road bazaars of 1,000 years ago, Davos attracts peddlers — albeit of theories, rather than goods — and functions as the ultimate marketplace for new global public policy ideas. A sophisticated audience pokes, prods, sniffs and tests their wares. Many ideas are discarded, but a few prevail and end up capturing the “zeitgeist” of the gathering.

Based on the sessions that I have attended this year thus far, three themes have caught my attention:

• The Shift of Power from West to East. Every panel that I have attended has identified the rise of Emerging Markets/Asia/China & India as “The New Reality” requiring a “reshaping of global norms.” Certainly, the transition from the unipolar world of the 1990s to the far more complex multipolar world of today is having profound effects, politically and economically. But it seems a bit premature to declare — as one panel suggested — that “Western global leadership is in terminal decline.” While the “West” (the U.S., Europe and Japan) faces some real challenges, it still constitutes over 60 percent of the global economy, undergirds the world’s global institutions, and possesses great fundamental strengths, including strong innovative capacity, large open markets, strong rule-of-law, and the world’s best higher education institutions. Nor must the rise of the East necessarily mean the decline of the West. As a prominent Chinese industrialist here wisely observed, such a zero-sum mentality may only end up weakening both.

• The Acceptance of “Industrial Policy.” For the past several decades, the term “industrial policy” has been in disfavor in policy circles, connoting the disastrous central planning policies of the former Soviet Union and failed development models. But in a number of panels here this week, “industrial policy” has been revived to describe the growing role that governments are playing — and, according to many participants, should play — in shaping markets. As South Africa’s trade minister Rob Davies said: “Industrial policy shouldn’t be radioactive; it is what we’re doing.” Not all, however, share this view. Another participant cautioned that, while public-private cooperation is fine, we must remain vigilant to some of the dangers of industrial policy — in particular, trade protectionism and governments picking winners and losers.

• Regional integration. Global solutions are increasingly hard to find for global problems, like climate change, terrorism and proliferation, for example. Accordingly, attention this year is squarely focused on regional institutions. For example, Indonesia’s President Yodhoyono identified ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) as looking to tackle such global problems this year. An African minister raised the exciting prospect of the rise of a unified Sub-Saharan common market that will act with newfound solidarity. It seems a fair bet that regional institutions like these will be of increasing relevance and companies will ignore them at their peril.

The need for more partnerships and integration emerged as a them in the “GE Global Innovation Barometer,” a survey of 1,000 business leaders in 12 countries that was launched at WEF this year. Click here to read the results. The opening of the Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland is seen above. Photo: Copyright by World Economic Forum; swiss-image.ch/Photo by Sebastian Derungs.

* Read more WEF stories on GE Reports

In a post on The Daily Beast today, Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer and senior vice president, GE, takes a closer look at the new attitudes revealed in the report, which surveyed 1,000 business executives in 12 countries. “Innovation in the 21st century requires a new blueprint,” she writes, “one that topples the top-down approach and engenders collaboration among companies, countries, and communities.”

“To help propel the world back to prosperity — and address the challenges being discussed now at Davos — innovation must yield purpose and profit…. Companies are moving beyond the old, closed model of innovation in which they competed to churn out ‘the next big thing.’ Three-quarters of executives said the way companies innovate in the 21st century will be totally different than the way they’ve innovated in the past.”

“Most important, the rules and expectations of innovation are changing globally in three main ways,” she writes. First, partnerships are moving to the forefront. Second, “individuals and smaller enterprises can be just as important to the innovative process as the big guys… So we’re learning to embrace creativity wherever we find it.” And third “to effect change, finding solutions that work at a local level is key.” She also underscores that companies need to re-think innovation in the context of “doing well by doing good,” as more than three-quarters of the respondents said they believe the greatest innovations of the 21st century will be those that address human needs, such as improved health and environmental quality, better energy security and increased access to education.

In the video below from the WEF conference in Davos, Comstock provides some of her other takeaways from the survey and the country-specific data that jumped out — such as Saudi Arabia’s commitment to innovation.

* See Beth Comstock’s video about expectations at Davos
* Follow more of Beth’s WEF takeaways on her Facebook page
* Read more WEF stories on GE Reports

In November, Visualizing.org — the new open collaboration data visualization hub created by Seed Media Group and GE — launched a challenge in which interactive design teams competed to help make sense of some of the big issues that were going to be discussed at the World Economic Forum’s Dubai meeting. A survey was conducted of the 700 council members, who were asked which other councils they are seeking dialogue with. Design teams then turned the massive amounts of data into interactive visualizations.

But the Network of Global Agenda Councils — which cover topics on the foremost topics in the global arena — meet virtually all through the year and their members are regular panelists in sessions at the Annual Meeting in Davos. With their survey results still fresh, we thought we’d take a look at another cut of the data — this time from one of the runners-up in the visualization competition: Daniel McLaren. The focus: How interest in China — and China’s own interests — might diverge.

As you can see in the snapshot below, China has a handful of very specific council topics that jump out in terms of priorities, most of which understandably deal with fallout from the financial crisis: banking and capital markets; systemic financial risk; and insurance and asset management, to name a few.

But, when it comes to interest ­in China, there’s certainly a lot more activity as practically every council and country is looking to engage.

* Learn about the contest and see the winning design
* Read more WEF stories on GE Reports

GEReports: What is the JV?

Lorraine Bolsinger: It’s a brand new business being created by GE Aviation and AVIC that will create and market commercial integrated avionics systems around the world to such aircraft manufacturers as Boeing, Airbus, China’s COMAC — which is the launch customer with its C919 narrow body jetliner — Bombardier and Embraer. The integrated avioincs system combines technologies in the aircraft that include navigation, cockpit displays, communications, and surveillance, to name a few. The joint venture’s initial focus is to provide integrated avionics system for the C919 aircraft now under development, and to build a global customer and product support infrastructure. Think of the integrated avionics system for an aircraft as much like the operating system on your computer.

GER: Why do a JV?

LB: GE Aviation is the world’s leading jet engine producer, but the company became a significant avionics supplier through the 2007 purchase of Smiths Aerospace. The teaming between AVIC and GE is the result of both companies desiring to become a tier-one, commercial avionics supplier globally, and we are thrilled to have launched our first products and services for the C919 program. GE Aviation has a tremendous relationship with the Chinese aviation industry. GE Aviation already generated revenues of $778 million in 2010 from sales and services in China alone. That figure is expected to grow to $1 billion in 2011. With COMAC anticipating the delivery of more than 2,300 C919 aircraft over the 20-year life of the program, the JV is already off to a strong start.

We also have a history of successful JVs, as this one with AVIC will be the fourth 50/50 joint partnership company for GE Aviation. The other three are CFM International (producer of the most popular jet engine in aviation history), GE Honda Aero Engines (producer of jet engines for small corporate jets), and The Engine Alliance (a JV between GE and Pratt & Whitney which produces engines for the A380.)

Lorraine Bolsinger

GER: What protections are in place to safeguard the technologies?

LB: GE and AVIC are technology companies and place a high value on protecting technology. The JV will be creating new technologies and GE, AVIC and the JV have every interest in protecting intellectual property, which will be a key asset of the venture. GE and AVIC have agreed to ensure the GE AVIC JV establishes a robust compliance plan to guard the technology and ensure that it is used solely for civilian applications.

Importantly, only approved personnel will be employed by the JV and there are strict security measures outlined in our technology control plan, or TCP, such as physically separating the JV from the parent companies and separating the information technology side of the JV from the parents. We’ll also have third party compliance audits conducted at least once a year.

GER: How do you know your safeguards are enough?

LB: During the two and half years we’ve worked on the formation of this JV, we’ve been consulting with the leading experts in global trade and business to ensure full government compliance and the highest level of security with regards to intellectual property and export controls. And we have continued to consult with relevant U.S. government agencies during this process.

GER: Does the US government provide any oversight to this transaction, now or ongoing?

LB: GE’s main contribution to the JV will be what’s called commercial IMA technology, which stands for integrated modular avionics – basically the computing system for the aircraft. Commercial IMA and IMA technology doesn’t require a license for export to most countries, including China. The JV will also supply onboard maintenance systems and display systems to COMAC, but it’s likely that much of this content will be made by the parent companies.

GER: How will you make sure that sensitive technology does not get transferred to the military?

LB: We’ve kept it very clear: No AVIC or person in China who retains military-related responsibilities will be given access to technical data from GE or the JV – and there’s no cross-employment allowed with military or intelligence departments – or with their suppliers. To make sure there is no gray area, AVIC personnel are not allowed to work for the military or be put on a military assignment for two years after leaving the JV.

GER: What does it mean for U.S. jobs?

LB: Even though the JV will be headquartered in Shanghai, the JV will support and maintain at least 300 high-tech jobs each in the US and China as well as a significant number of jobs in the U.K. — and that number is expected to grow. In the U.S, the majority of the jobs supporting the JV will be in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Clearwater, Florida. In all, GE Aviation’s work in China translates into about 1,800 GE high-technology jobs in the U.S. They involve producing and supporting jet engines for China, as well as developing the new engine and avionics system for the C919.

* Watch a video featuring new employees working on the JV in our Grand Rapids, Michigan facility

The five agreements are expected to deliver more than $2 billion in revenue for GE, which is the nation’s second-largest manufacturing exporter, and generate more than $1 billion in exports from the U.S. Importantly, they’ll be creating or supporting jobs in both countries — including more than 4,500 U.S. jobs.

The deals include:

• A joint venture between GE Energy and Shenhua Group Corporation signed on Tuesday to develop coal gasification technologies in China, key to commercial-scale deployment of cleaner coal solutions. This collaboration is expected to generate more than $150 million in revenues over five years and $100 million of U.S. exports in services, R&D and licensing. It will also support job creation in the United States and China, including hundreds of jobs in Houston, Greenville, SC; and Schenectady, NY.

• A collaborative agreement between GE Energy and China Huadian Corporation to develop distributed energy combined heat and power projects, which are expected to become the most efficient natural gas solutions for China. GE forecasts at least 50 gas-turbine generator sets being sold and installed in China in the next five years, resulting in $500 million of revenue for the partnership and $350 million in U.S. gas turbine exports from Cincinnati, Houston, Colorado and Oregon. This will support more than 2,100 jobs throughout GE’s domestic U.S. supply chain.

• A joint venture between GE Aviation and Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to develop and market the new generation of avionics systems with an immediate priority on supporting development of China’s first home-grown big passenger jet. The joint venture will result in $300 million in exports from Michigan, Florida and Ohio and support at least 300 high-tech jobs in each the United States and China.

• A Letter of Intent signed by GE Transportation with the Ministry of Railways (MOR) to provide $350 million worth of U.S.-built locomotives, locomotive sub-assembly kits, service support and signaling systems for China’s railway upgrade. The export order could support 2,000 U.S. jobs

• A Letter of Intent signed by GE Transportation with the MOR to reaffirm both parties’ intent to collaborate on High-Speed Rail (HSR) and electric rail opportunities in North America. The partnership represents a joint investment of approximately $50 million with the potential to support 250 U.S. jobs by 2012 for the first phase of the agreement.

These agreements build on a larger-scale commitment GE has already made last November when GE announced plans to invest more than $2 billion in China through 2012 to expand the company’s R&D and innovation capabilities and create new local partnerships.

Additionally, GE has been selected as one of 10 founding U.S. companies to participate in a new U.S.-China public-private partnership on healthcare, which was also launched during President Hu’s visit and aims to bolster bilateral cooperation advancing technology in and increasing accessibility to healthcare services across China.

Clean tech: The development of coal gasification technologies, such as those in the plant above, will support job creation in the U.S. and China, including hundreds of jobs in Houston, Greenville, SC; and Schenectady, NY.

Global growth: Among the agreements already in place are those for cleaner coal plants, avionics, and high-speed passenger rail in the U.S. — all of which are helping create and support U.S. manufacturing and R&D jobs.

With China experiencing one of the largest rural to urban migrations in history, a number of aviation, energy and rail agreements have been signed between GE and China over the last 14 months. During Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington this week, updates will be announced on the deals, which are designed to help one of the world’s fastest growing markets meet its infrastructure challenges in sustainable ways — and to create and support U.S. jobs, provide unprecedented access to Chinese technologies and markets, and generate a new wave of growth for GE.

In terms of jobs, the deals will support nearly 4,500 in the U.S., including those along GE’s U.S. supply chain. The lynchpin of the latest aviation partnership is the formation of an avionics joint venture between GE Aviation and China’s AVIC, first announced in November 2009, which marks a significant milestone in the growing aerospace relationship between Chinese industry and GE Aviation since the mid-1980s. There are already about 150 GE employees working at our Grand Rapids, Michigan engineering facility to help develop the central avionics nervous system that will power China’s new C919 narrow body commercial jetliner, of which more than 2,300 are expected to be made during the 20-year lifetime of the program. (Meet some of the engineers on the Michigan project in a GE Reports video.) The partnership will support and maintain at least 300 high-tech jobs locally in each country.

In energy, efforts center on helping China’s tackle its growing need for power, which is expected to double in the next 10 years. The energy deals, by expanding U.S. exports, create or support thousands of U.S. jobs. As Bloomberg News notes in its story this morning, one involves the potential sale of 500 gas turbines — derived from GE Aviation jet engines — that will allow China to use local sources of gas in the most efficient way across dozens of decentralized locations. That agreement will create or support 2,100 jobs in the U.S. economy as GE uses a wide range of U.S. subcontractors for equipment from companies in Ohio, Colorado, Texas, Oregon. The turbine deal with Huadian Engineering Group represents a $350 million export opportunity for GE.

At the same time, GE and Shenhua are forming a coal gasification joint venture to sell and develop gasification technology and advance the deployment of “cleaner coal” solutions in China. This new company would combine GE’s expertise in industrial gasification technologies with Shenhua’s expertise in building and operating coal gasification facilities. The collaboration will support hundreds of engineering, services and R&D jobs in GE’s gasification headquarters in Houston, in Greenville, South Carolina and at the GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York. The new research agreements have been forged amidst a backdrop of a growing GE R&D presence in China that is tapping into the country’s homegrown scientific talent via GE’s Global Research Center located in Shanghai and new regional lab sites announced in November.

In the rail partnership, GE and China’s Ministry of Railways are already working together to develop high-speed passenger rail technology for the U.S. market — and to find ways to help China upgrade its rail system with GE locomotive and railway signaling technologies. The passenger rail cooperation agreement alone is an investment that could sustain or create approximately 250 jobs in the U.S. by 2012 in the first phase of the agreement. GE Transportation CEO Lorenzo Simonelli told Bloomberg that GE will also be signing deals that “may bring in $1.4 billion and add or preserve 2,000 U.S. jobs, including an order for 500 exported locomotive kits and related services valued at $350 million.”

As GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt underscored when many of the collaborations were first announced, “new global sales will be a direct result of these collaborations, safeguarding and growing U.S. jobs.” In its story, Bloomberg notes that GE’s China sales are rising at about 20 percent annually and should grow in the “high double-digits” in 2011.

* Read a Q&A about the avionics deal
* Read a fact sheet about GE’s China deals
* Read about GE’s advanced coal technologies
* Learn more about the high-speed rail goals
* Read the “ABCs of IGCC Technology” on GE Reports
* Read more China stories on GE Reports

In the video below, some of the team members who were newly hired for this project explain their work on the technologies, which comprise the central information system of an airliner.

The approximately 150-person team, which will soon be growing even larger in 2012, is currently working on major avionics components of the C919 — China’s new narrow body commercial jetliner that is currently in development (GE’s also making the engines that will power that plane).

The early phase of the program involves defining the technical requirements – such as how the aircraft should operate, look, and feel – with that eventually transitioning into design and creation of hardware and software. .

As Lorraine Bolsinger, president and CEO for GE’s Aviation Systems business, said when the deal was first announced, “With 9 percent traffic growth, and a rising middle class which is largely underserved, China is the world’s fastest growing aviation market and we need to ensure that GE and the United States is part of this growth.”