WASHINGTON – Growth spurred by tax money poured over the gears of the economy may not be the most immediate or enduring lubricant for putting people back to work. But when it's China that's doing the spending, U.S. companies have a here-and-now sales opportunity.

General Motors, for example, has come back from bankruptcy and hopes the federal "cash for clunkers" program will boost U.S. sales. China, meanwhile, has surpassed the United States as the biggest car market in the world, and GM products are big sellers there.

Through the first seven months of the year, the Chinese bought 7.2 million vehicles. U.S. sales in the same period were 5.8 million.

China's government is pushing $585 billion of stimulus money into infrastructure programs. But in April, the government announced an additional $125 billion for investments in health care information technology and other services.

Plano-based Perot Systems last month won a big consulting contract for health care information technology throughout Hunan Province in southeastern China, along with two other contracts with a Chinese airline and a heavy equipment manufacturer.

Ross Perot Jr., chairman of the firm, said his trip to sign the deals was "almost the perfect sales call."

In an interview with CNBC, he recalled telling his China employees, "The biggest problem you'll have is you won't be able to ramp up fast enough to take care of the demand we currently see over here."

The Chinese don't go in for buying very many cars in Detroit for export to Beijing. GM has substantial manufacturing investments in Shanghai. That's true of many other U.S. brands sold in China.

But services – software, consulting services, legal services and all the other products that rely on brain over brawn – now constitute a third of U.S exports. In May, federal trade numbers showed that U.S. companies exported $82.1 billion in goods and $41.3 billion in services.

Texas is the leading exporter among the 50 states, and a recovery among exporters would go a long way toward pulling the state back into a job-creating mode.

Federal data released in June showed Texas exports neared $200 billion last year. The biggest share went to Mexico ($62 billion), but exports to China were growing strongly before the slump and hit $8.4 billion for the year.

This year, Mexico is in the doldrums while China has roared back.

David Miller, Perot Systems' managing director for China, said the Chinese recovery looks to him like the real deal.

"What I've seen, and continue to see, is a dramatic recovery of the economy," he said. "Real estate values are going back up. Unemployment is dropping very fast."

Chinese car sales are a good indicator, Miller said, of the emphasis on developing a strong middle class in China that would shift the extraordinary reliance on exports toward a more balanced economy with strong domestic consumption.

Health care is another example, he said. Chinese who see a doctor or enter a hospital pay their bills with cash rather than through health insurance. When everyone worked for the government, this wasn't a big social challenge.

Now it is, and worries about future medical bills help explain China's extraordinary 30 percent personal savings rate.

"The creation of this middle class and the impact on demand and consumption, I think, will have legs beyond the stimulus" in China, Miller said.