Best Buy, the largest consumer-electronics chain in the United States, is to speed up the rate at which it adds stores in China to tap surging growth here amid slowing sales at home.

"China is without a doubt our major source of growth" outside the US, Robert Willett, head of the company's international division, said in Shanghai. Best Buy says about two-thirds of new stores it opens outside the US in the year ending March 2009 will be in China. The Minnesota-based company currently operates one store in Shanghai, in the Xujiahui shopping district. Best Buy has an additional 159 stores through Chinese retailer Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Co, which it bought control of in 2006.