Jeffrey Immelt has certainly stirred up a hornet's nest in China, as well as in the White House, with his words of wisdom about doing business with them.
In the most publicised supposedly private speech of the year, Immelt whinged that it was getting very difficult for big companies to do business on the mainland and that his own company, General Electric, was considering other options.
He complained that China was becoming increasingly hostile towards foreign multinational companies and showing growing protectionist tendencies. 'I really worry about China,' Immelt told a dinner audience in Rome. 'I am not sure that in the end they want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful.'
Just in case Beijing feels hurt at being singled out for criticism, its leaders should compare notes with US President Barack Obama, who also felt the sting of Immelt's critical barbs. The GE chairman, chief executive and grand panjandrum of all he surveys complained that the business mood in the US was 'terrible', with the threat that over-regulation could damage a 'tepid' American recovery. How fortunate to be as warm as tepid.
'We [the US] are a pathetic exporter. We have to become an industrial powerhouse again, but you don't do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in synch,' Immelt said. He singled out the president for criticism, claiming that business did not like Obama, nor did Obama like business.
It's really hard to know whether to laugh or to cry. After all, GE is a big company, founded by Thomas Edison, given the zip code 12345 for its original Schenectady headquarters, ranked as the second-biggest company in the world according to Forbes, with 304,000 employees worldwide, and the only one of the 12 original Dow Jones Industrial Average companies still on the index. GE does US$5.3 billion in business a year in China, although this is only a mere 3.4 per cent of its global revenues.