General Electric Co., the world’s biggest jet-engine maker, plans to form a joint venture with China Aviation Industry Corp. I to sell avionics systems and services for new aircraft, the companies said Sunday.

GE and AVIC I aim to start the venture, which will export products from both its base in China and the U.S., in mid-2010, pending regulatory approval, the companies said in a statement Sunday. GE’s China Technology Center in Shanghai also will house a commercial aviation center, while 200 jobs will be added in the U.S.
The 50-50 joint venture will focus on electronic systems and integration services for newly-designed commercial aircraft. The companies said the venture will start by bidding on the single-aisle C919, a 168-seat plane being marketed by China’s government-controlled Commercial Aircraft Corp. to compete with the best-selling 737 model from Boeing Co. and the A320 from Airbus SAS.
GE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt and AVIC President Lin Zuoming are scheduled to sign the agreement to form the venture at an event in Beijing Sunday.
GE Aviation Systems, based in Evendale, Ohio, offers aviation systems that include cockpit electronics purchased through its 2007 acquisition of Smiths Group Plc’s aerospace unit. The GE-AVIC venture aims to compete with companies that include Honeywell International Inc., United Technologies Corp.’s Hamilton Sundstrand and Rockwell Collins Inc. The 200 new U.S. jobs will be added mainly at GE’s Grand Rapids, Michigan, facility, spokeswoman Jennifer Villarreal said.
‘Company to country’
Faster-growing markets for GE, including those in emerging economies like China and India, may make up half the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company’s sales in the next five years, up from about 25 percent this year, Immelt told customers of the company’s water business at an event last week. Sales outside the U.S. will near 60 percent this year as GE pursues its “company to country” strategy using units Immelt has labeled infrastructure, he said.
GE is also the world’s biggest provider of power-generation equipment, locomotives and medical-imaging machines and related services. Immelt is also pursuing a plan to develop products inside countries like China for domestic use as well as for export via ventures that aim to create U.S. jobs.
CFM International, GE Aviation’s 50-50 venture with Safran SA of France, produces the world’s most popular jet engine, the only one available on the 737. CFM competes with International Aero Engines, a venture led by rivals Rolls-Royce Group Plc and United Technologies’s Pratt & Whitney unit, on Airbus A320 models. CFM intends to compete to power China’s narrow body jet, Safran said last month.