The booming Chinese economy brings tremendous opportunities for U.S. industrial conglomerate Honeywell, said Shane Tedjarati, president of Honeywell Global High Growth Regions.

"China's macro trends, such as the digital economy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beautiful China, smart manufacturing and so on, bring tremendous opportunities for Honeywell to play a bigger role in this dynamic market," he said.

Honeywell has seen its fastest growth in China since 2005, with a cumulative investment of one billion U.S. dollars there, he said.

From 2005 to 2018, the number of Honeywell's employees in China grew from 4,000 to 11,000. In 2013, China became Honeywell's largest market outside the United States. In 2018, Honeywell's revenue in China was about three billion dollars, a sixfold increase from 2005.

Speaking of the Honeywell Connected Enterprise team set up in China in early 2017, Tedjarati said, "It is the only regional team outside the U.S. market, which shows the company's emphasis and confidence in the Chinese market," adding that he hopes Honeywell's connected solutions can power China's booming digital economy.

Honeywell, as a beneficiary of the BRI, has cooperated with leading Chinese enterprises in the fields of infrastructure construction and energy development.

"At present, Honeywell has more than 20 branches with more than 3,200 local employees in the countries along the 'Belt and Road'," he said.

"Beautiful China" also presents many opportunities for Honeywell, he said, as about 50 percent of Honeywell products and technologies are related to environmental protection and energy efficiency, and Honeywell has more than 100 years of experience in sustainable development and energy conservation.

Tedjarati acknowledged that the pace of growth in China, especially that of local businesses, constitutes a challenge for global enterprises.

Since 2010, Honeywell has stopped being bench-marked against other multinational companies, but against some influential local companies in China, he said. "We are determined to make Honeywell 'become the Chinese competitor (BCC)'."

The BCC strategy represented a "mindset shift," he said, and at its core is "speed and authorization, empowering the best employees, making a lot of decisions locally, and must do things in China with a great sense of urgency."

Looking ahead, Tedjarati, who has lived in China for 25 years, believes Honeywell will have a promising future in China.

"Based on the development strategy of 'East for East (E4E)', Honeywell will continue to develop our core business, develop key customers and major cities, build partnerships with them, and aggressively expand into the mid-market, especially the under exploited mass mid-market," he said.

The E4E strategy, put forward by Honeywell in 2004, aims to meet the needs of the Chinese market through a series of locally-based product development and innovation.

He said Honeywell had signed up many agreements with Chinese companies at the first China International Import Expo (CIIE), most of which were related to connected technology.

"The connectivity business is where our opportunity is," Tedjarati said.

"Customers don't just want to buy our products, they want us to provide a range of solutions, from software to hardware, to help them meet the challenges and win the future," he said.