Jacques Rogge

GE can point to roughly $700 million in China-related sales thanks to its sponsorship of the Beijing Olympics, according to Peter Foss, the company’s president of Olympic sponsorship and corporate sales.

Foss made the comments during the first TOP-sponsor shindig of the Beijing Games, in which GE held a grand opening of its two-story, 16,500-square-foot GE Imagination Center on Monday.

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“Our sponsorship is about selling something,” Foss said, adding that since GE signed on as a TOP sponsor and ramped up its business activity in China, “we can look and identify about $700 million (in increased sales) that’s directly related to the Olympics here in Beijing.”

NBC's Dick Ebersol

GE has supplied energy distribution, lighting, water treatment, and security equipment and systems to 400 different projects around Beijing, according to the company. About 12,000 of GE’s 300,000 employees worldwide are based in China. GE is building a China headquarters in Shanghai.

IOC President Jacques Rogge presided over the opening of the Imagination Center, and NBC Universal Sports and Olympics Chairman Dick Ebersol also attended.

Located on the north end of the Olympic Park, amid a host of other TOP and BOCOG sponsor pavilions, the GE exhibit is reminiscent of a World’s Fair-like display. With HD 180-degree video, water falls and wind turbines, this science and technology center showcases the Fairfield, Conn.-based conglomerate’s growing businesses in, among others, water treatment, health care and energy efficient aviation and rail engines.

Photographers at the GE Exhibit

Foss said GE is expecting 6,000 spectators a day to visit the Imagination Center during the Games.

The Imagination Center’s emphasis is on sustainability, an issue critical to China’s 1.3 billion people. Indeed, Monday’s grand opening was held amid 95-degree heat, shirt-drenching 70 percent humidity and a heavy, hazy sky.