GE在华80亿美元业务现状分析

对通用电气的中国业务来说，2015年是一段平谈无奇的时光。在中国GDP增速达到官方宣布的6.9%的情况下，GE中国的销售额仅略有上升，而GE为前者制定的增长目标每年都是两位数。

然而，影响GE的并非中国经济放缓，其低迷表现另有原因。

中国政府持续两年的反腐行动让GE的本地客户变得紧张兮兮，他们都不敢参与大型项目，因为监管部门对这些项目审查甚严。GE的另一部分客户，也就是石油和医疗保健行业的国企则正在进行重大改革和调整，这让大宗采购很难通过审批。

不过，反腐的影响正在减弱。也许正是出于这个原因，赴香港参加《财富》最具影响力女性国际峰会的GE中国首席执行官段小缨在接受我们采访时表示：“可以预见，2016年中国的情况会变好。”

GE中国的年收入规模为80亿美元，段小缨从2014年起担任CEO。她说，反腐总的来说对中国有利，但“确实也让项目决策出现了延误。”这一点很重要，因为“我们的客户大多都是国企”，是政府监察的重点。

段小缨表示，在中国政府定于3月份颁布的“十三五”规划中，绿色能源是一大主题。中国的用电量占全世界的三分之一。这就带来了一个问题，因为中国70%的电力都来自燃煤发电企业。

“中国将全面转向清洁能源，也就是天然气、可再生能源，同时也包括更环保地使用煤炭。”段小缨预计，可再生能源和天然气消费量将在今后五年内翻番，而GE的业务就包括风电、水电和天然气。

成为GE中国掌门人之前，段小缨的职务是GE医疗集团大中华区总裁。她说，在GE的所有中国业务中，医疗部门的前景也许最为光明，甚至超过了航空业务；而后者制造飞机发动机的速度几乎无法跟上中国交通运输需求的增长。

在今年早些时候的业绩发布会上，GE首席执行官杰夫•伊梅尔特曾表示，GE的医疗设备业务度过了“艰难时期”的第二个年头。

在中国，公立医院人满为患。患者可能要花几个小时来排队挂号，还要经历漫长的等待，才能获得短时间的诊治。为解决这个令人头疼的问题，中国政府在最近的改革中将发展民营医院作为一条出路。

民营医院买得起GE销售的昂贵医疗设备，比如CT扫描仪，原因是它们诊治的是中国的富裕阶层。对于其他民众，中国政府正在推广基本医疗设施。这些设施在美国很普通，在中国却很少见。

“在中国，GE销售的所有大型设备都要通过公开招标，而反腐打断了招标活动。这和民营领域不同，在民营领域是纯粹的商业谈判。”段小缨如此分析。

不过，去年采购的放缓创造了大量需求，而且段小缨认为这些需求将在今年显现出来。她说：“观察一下就会发现，购买意愿非常强烈。”

这可能不是乐观，这也许只是一家和中国国企关系密切、但在两年的大规模反腐中颇为受伤的跨国公司看到的现状。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：詹妮

Last year was forgettable for GEin China. Sales grew only slightly in a market that officially registered 6.9% GDP growth and was one in which GE set goals for double-digit growth year in and year out.

But it wasn’t China’s slowing economy that hurt GE. The weak performance had a couple of other causes.

The government’s continuing two-year anti-corruption campaign turned GE’s local customers into nail-biting bureaucrats afraid to engage in big projects that were getting scrutinized by regulators. It was also GE’s customers themselves, the government-owned companies (SOEs) in oil and health care who are undergoing heavy reforms and changes that make big purchases hard to approve.

The thawing of that campaign may be why Rachel Duan, CEO of GE China, told Fortune in an interview after her appearance at Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit in Hong Kong today, “We can expect 2016 to be a good year in China.”

Duan, who has led GE’s $8 billion revenue China business since 2014, said the anti-corruption campaign is generally a good thing for China, but “it does impact the project decision delays.” And that matters because “most of our customers are SOEs” who face the most government scrutiny.

Duan said green energy is a big theme of the government’s new five-year plan, to be released in March. One third of electricity usage in the world is in China. That’s problematic considering 70% of China’s electricity is derived from coal. “There’s going to be a tremendous shift toward clean energy—that’s [natural] gas, that’s renewables, but also more clean-based coal use,” she says. Duan expects renewables and natural gas use to double in the next five years. GE has businesses in wind, hydro power and natural gas.

Before Duan took over GE’s China business, she ran its health care division in the country. She says that division might have the brightest prospects out of any for GE in China, including aviation, which almost can’t build jet engines fast enough to keep up with travel demand in the country.

GE’s medical equipment division last year posted what GE CEO Jeff Immelt said during an earnings release earlier this year was the second of “a tough couple of years.”

But recent government reforms have promoted private hospitals as a solution for China’s nagging issue of overcrowded public hospitals, where patients often line up at three or four in the morning to wait all day for a brief consultation with a doctor.

The private hospitals can afford the expensive medical equipment GE sells, like CT scanners, because the richest in China are visiting them. For everyone else, the government is beginning to push primary care facilities, which are normal in the U.S. but almost nonexistent in China.

“In China every large piece of equipment we sell in the space is going through a public tender. The tendering process has been interrupted by the anti-corruption campaign,” Duan says. “It’s not like private sector [where] it’s purely a business negotiation.”

However, the slowdown in buying last year has created a well of demand, which Duan says will become apparent this year. “When you look at intent to buy, it’s very robust,” she says.

It may not be optimism, it may just be the reality of what a multinational with close ties to government customers sees in China today following a huge and often debilitating two-year anti-corruption campaign.