General Electric : GE remains upbeat on slower-growing China, says Rice

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - General Electric still sees plenty of opportunities in a slower-growing China, even as the government's anti-corruption campaign causes some deals to take longer to get approved, a senior executive said on Wednesday.

GE vice chairman John Rice, speaking on the sidelines of a company event in Shanghai, told Reuters there was some "level of caution" in reaction to President Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption even though he broadly welcomed the campaign.

"Yes the economy is growing at a slower growth rate ... (but) it's the world’s second-largest economy so there’s plenty of opportunity," he said.

"There’s some level of caution, people in some cases reacting to the anti-corruption campaign ... The effort to clean this up and deal with some of these issues will be really helpful to China and very helpful to companies like GE."

Rice also said the fall in the value of the British pound after the vote to leave the European Union would help GE's exports and the company had no long-term plans to make substantive changes to its business in the United Kingdom.

GE earlier Wednesday announced a partnership with China's Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL] to develop its industrial internet strategy. GE said industrial internet applications would help the firm make $500 million in productivity savings globally in 2016.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Stephen Coates)