The Chinese Government and General Motors, the world's largest automaker, yesterday teamed up to control vehicle emissions and to ease a problem that pollutes air around the country in China, a country where more and more households are buying cars.

The team will first do advanced research, according to an agreement signed yesterday to cement the partnership.

GM has promised to share its smog-control expertise with China in the long term.

Within two years, the team is expected to design different measures for different parts of the country and to propose vehicle pollution regulations and publish a white paper on China's smog.

Motor vehicles are becoming a major source of air pollution in China. Demand for automobiles has risen for more than 20 years in a row as more households find the money to buy cars.

Sales growth in China is encouraging senior auto executives to believe the country will become the world's largest automobile market in the next couple of decades.

GM, which has spent US$2 billion on five ventures in China, on November 14, signed another agreement, on material research, with four Chinese universities and a high-profile institute.

The signatories are Qing-hua University, Shanghai Jiao-tong University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Jilin University of Technology and the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Chinese officials and GM executives said they expect these agreements to produce a win-win situation.