TreeHugger interviews Ferdinando “Nani” Becalli-Falco, President and CEO of GE International, about the company’s efforts to make a profit while also helping to “green” China:
In terms of its sustainability goals and needs, what does China represent to GE?
We have to look at China in terms of the progress that it’s made in a certain period of time and the progress that it will make over a certain period of time. If you think about where China was in terms of industrial production, environment, and so on – I came to China in 1993. If you look at it right now and what it can be in the future, you have a country that is really working on the sustainability of progress, on sustainability of technology, capability of becoming a true industrial power from an economic point of view, and from the quality-of-life point of view. When you look at the way the Chinese are living today, you recognize that it’s a different world than what it was just a few years ago.
This is an internal process of development that is going to drive sustainability. When you have 400 million Chinese that are also developed, that are demanding certain kinds of products, a certain kind of quality, they are not going to go backwards. As a matter of fact there are going to be more people that are going to join this group. And this market driven economy, which today is controlled in a certain way, will continue to liberalize.
