General Motors Corp. (GM) would need to build another car-assembly plant in China to meet its stated goal of doubling its annual sales in the country to 2 million vehicles in five years, a senior company executive said Wednesday.

"We're pretty well placed to do a lot of growth at the moment without having to spend a lot of money," Kevin Wale, head of GM China Group, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. That said, "We would probably need at most one new facility to get to 2 million units."

Wale gave no indication that GM is already planning an additional factory in China. He said most of the company's existing plants in China have been designed and built with flexibility for expansion, and that GM will try to squeeze more production capacity out of those existing plants.

-By Norihiko Shirouzo, The Wall Street Journal; 86-106588-5848; norihiko.shirouzo@wsj.com