General Motors Co, the largest foreign automaker in China by sales, said on Wednesday that it is relocating its international operations headquarters to Singapore from Shanghai.

The move comes after the company reinforced the importance of its Chinese operations in its global network.

General Motors will have about 120 employees at its headquarters in Singapore by the second quarter of next year, it said in a statement.

The new headquarters, at a location still to be determined, will include representatives from General Motors' regional sales and marketing, product planning, finance, government relations, human resources, IT, legal and communications departments. It will oversee key parts of the company's business in Africa, the ASEAN region, Australia and New Zealand, India, South Korea and the Middle East, as well as Chevrolet and Cadillac Europe, according to the statement.

"Having a team in Singapore is a key step in the CIO's transformation," said Stefan Jacoby, executive vice-president of the company's consolidated international operations, known as CIO. "It offers several advantages, including greater proximity to key CIO markets such as ASEAN and India, the Middle East and Africa. It will also help us to create a renewed identity for CIO and lead General Motors' umbrella strategy for the region."

Meanwhile, General Motors also told China Daily via email that "China is the world's largest vehicle market and it demands singular attention and focus for the company to remain a leader".

Though General Motors is creating a renewed identity for its international operations, at the same time, it plans to "maintain the backbone of the organization in China and South Korea. Decisions about CIO markets will be made in the interest of growing our business while allowing us to focus even more intently on China".

In August, General Motors named Tim Lee, who has spent nearly four years in charge of international operations, as chairman of General Motors China with responsibility for 12 joint ventures and two wholly owned foreign enterprises. Lee also kept his role as executive vice-president for global manufacturing.

The move indicated the US company's strategy of reinforcing its leadership position in China, and also the country's importance to General Motors in the global market.

"General Motors leads in the US and China, the two most important vehicle markets in the world," the company's chairman and CEO Dan Akerson said in August. "We are also in the midst of the most aggressive product rollout in our history. Lee is critical to building on our success in China and to ensuring flawless vehicle launches around the globe."

General Motors was not the pioneer in underlining the importance of the Chinese market by appointing a global-level executive as the leader of its China operations.

At the end of last year, Daimler AG - the world's third-largest manufacturer of luxury vehicles - appointed Hubertus Troska, who is the chairman and CEO of Daimler Northeast Asia, as a member of its board of management, in a bid to revive sales growth in China. The German company aims to have annual sales of 300,000 units in the country by 2015.

Jochem Heizmann, who was appointed president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China last June, is also a management board member of Volkswagen AG, shouldering the responsibility of implementing the group's 2018 strategy of racking up 2 million sales in China by that year.