The U.S. Corning Co., Ltd., one of world's 500 largest enterprises, set up here Wednesday its first wholly-owned China subsidiary to produce environment- friendly automobile parts.

Corning (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. is also the American company's fourth overseas enterprise producing supporters of catalytic converters, which are used in automobiles to control waste gas emission.

The new company, with a total investment of 77 million U.S. dollars, has an annual production ability of 7.5 million ceramic honeycomb supporters, the key part of catalytic converters widely used in cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles.

More than 80 percent of the products are expected to be exported to the Republic of Korea, Japan and other countries and regions, a company executive said.
It is learned that about 500 million automobiles in the world are using the Corning products.

Holly L. Hulse, general manager of Coring (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., said the wide application of company's products in China would is expected to help greatly reduce environmental pollution caused by automobiles in the country.

As Corning's Asian manufacturing, sales and technological development center, company chairman Roger Ackerman said, the Shanghai subsidiary will be built into the company's most advanced specialized enterprise in the world in five to eight years.