French retailer Carrefour is not interested in making a major acquisition in China in response to Wal-Mart's reported expansion plans, the retailer's chief executive said Friday.

Carrefour could lose its top spot as China's largest foreign retailer if U.S. giant Wal-Mart succeeds in buying Trust-Mart, which owns 100 supercenters in China.

"We asked ourselves should we keep the emphasis on organic growth or take the risk of doing a large acquisition with all the problems and challenges of integration," chief executive officer Jose Luis Duran said. "We are more interested in organic growth, and we will not deviate from that."

"Our priority is clearly to develop internally," Duran said. "To grow externally, we have two conditions, one is a rational price and the second is to ensure that we can integrate without endangering our existing base."

"In the case of Trust-Mart, these two conditions were not completely met," Duran said, while admitting that Carrefour was earlier interested in purchasing the Trust-Mart chain.

Duran was speaking to reporters during a business visit to China with French President Jacques Chirac.

Sources have said Wal-Mart is planning to buy Taiwan's Trust-Mart for US$1 billion, which would more than double its presence in the world's most populous country.

Carrefour aims to open at least 20 hypermarkets, which sell food along with household items, such as fridges and TVs, in China this year and beyond. It opened its 84th hypermarket Saturday, which is its 7th in Beijing and 1,000th in the world.

Carrefour, the world's second-largest retailer after Wal-Mart, was more interested in tactical purchases of local retail chains, Duran said, citing but not naming a chain of 14 stores in Wuhan and another chain in the country's northeastern city of Harbin.

Of the nearly US$2 billion in Carrefour's global revenues in 2005, the Chinese market only represented a modest 2 percent.

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