A General Motors (GM) senior executive predicted the automaker's robust sales will continue in emerging markets such as India, Brazil and China, which he said was playing an increasingly important role in the company's global growth map.

"I feel very good about GM's opportunities in China, and we are doing everything possible to respond to what the market is looking for and what customers' needs are," Edward Welburn, vice president for global design, told Xinhua in an interview on Thursday during the ongoing 2011 Washington Auto Show.

"China's economy and market are growing very fast, and we have a major design studio in Shanghai. Our Chinese design team works very closely with the studio in the United States," he said.

Welburn said while the U.S. market had showed a strong rebounding, sales in China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies were growing fast, adding that the auto giant was stepping up its global design efforts to roll out a series of new vehicles to match local customers' needs.

"Buick continues to grow fast in China, and Chevrolet is at an unbelievable pace of growth there. The key is that there is a huge population and many potential car drivers in Chinese tier-two, tier-three, or even tier-four cities besides Beijing and Shanghai, which represented huge growth room," GM's design chief noted.

Last year, the Detroit-based company registered record-high sales in China of more than 2.3 million vehicles, up 28.8 percent from 2009, giving substaintial boost to the automaker's robust global comeback.

Welburn believed GM's global sales might continue to increase significantly on back of some important vehicles the automake introduced to the market, and it would continue to employ more talented car designers to further strengthen its talent pool, a 1,700-member global design team.

The U.S. auto sector staged a resilient recovery in 2010 after tiding over the worst recession in decades, with the recent relisting of the auto giant GM, which was cited by President Barack Obama as a major milestone in the turnaround of the entire American auto industry.

GM has eliminated several brands, such as Hummer, Saab, Pontiac and Saturn and focused its efforts on Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009.

GM announced Thursday it would drop its application for more than 14 billion U.S. dollars in subsidized loans from the U.S. government, as it had regained its financial footing to fund its investment in fuel-efficient and electric vehicles and did not need government-backed loans to go green.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama put forward the goal that the nation was aiming to become the first one to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, and that was was "very aggressive," said Welburn. However, he also said people would gradually find electric vehicles more appealing partly due to fuel price spike.

Welburn said GM will continue to work on and invest in electric vehicle technology and battery research, aspiring to become a world leader in this area.