Boeing's new 787 will be a big seller in China
James McNerney Jr, chairman, president and CEO of the Boeing company, made the statement at a luncheon organized by The Chicago Council On Global Affairs as part of its Corporate Program: Focus on China.
McNerney started his speech by commending Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner for the progress their teams made this week at the Sino-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing.
“It is vitally important that US leaders are engaged in supporting US trade relationships. Expanded engagement in international markets, combined with the recovery of our financial service markets, is critical to accelerating our overall economic recovery,” he said.
In 1972, then President Richard Nixon landed in Beijing aboard Air Force One – a Boeing 707 – marking the first visit of a US president to China. Boeing has been one of the few American companies present in China since diplomatic and economic channels were reopened.
“That Boeing 707 is truly the game-changing airplane of its time. China ordered ten Boeing 707 jetliners soon after the visit, setting in motion a tremendously productive relationship between a company (Boeing) and a country (China) – a relationship that continues today and in many ways has become symbolic of the four decades of cooperation between our two nations,” McNerney said.
When talking about the significant changes in China, McNerney said, “One of the most important changes in China that I have witnessed – the rapid growth in personal incomes. A growing middle class in China is dramatically reshaping the country’ s domestic economy and has global economic impact too.”
Regarding Boeing’s growing business with China, the CEO exclaimed, “China has bought more than any country in the world (except the US). It has a total of 1,560 airplanes (almost 53 percent of them are Boeing airplanes), and the average age of these planes is just six and a half years – meaning that China also has one of the youngest fleets in the region.”
Commenting on the relationship between China and the United States, he noted, “I believe the US and China are already interdependent and growing more so every day. In fact, our interdependence with China is key to the US achieving President Obama’ s goal of doubling America’s exports over the next five years – an increase projected to support two million American jobs at a time when we really need them.”
“I expect that the US-China relationship will always be complex, but that global interdependence in business will help keep both nations motivated to work out their differences constructively,” he added. – read more at ChinaDaily.com…
