Roland Tong, chief representative of Denver, Colorado, said launching a trade office in Shanghai, China's financial hub, will enhance trade links between Denver and Chinese cities.

After forging a relationship with Kunming, in Southwest China's Yunnan Province in 1985, Denver is set to tap other emerging business opportunities in China following the permanent normalization of trade relations between the two countries last year, according to Tong.

Big US corporations have been in China for a long time, but the Shanghai trade office will help more medium-sized US businesses come to China, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb said.

"They don't know how to do business here,'' said Webb. "It's our hope that the trade office can help them contact the right people and work towards cooperation.''

Economic globalization is felt more strongly at the local level, where new opportunities continue to arise for US companies wishing to expand their businesses beyond American boundaries into untapped foreign markets, according to the mayor.

To give local businesses first-hand experience of China, the mayor led up to 50 Denver business and civic leaders on a two-week trade mission to Shanghai, Xi'an and Beijing, which concluded last weekend.

"It is my hope that China will continue to grow, I support permanent normal trade relations with China and I support its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). I believe that people need to do business together, and to develop a better understanding of each other,'' said the mayor.

As a result of permanent normalized trade relations with China, smaller industries and businesses are looking to China for new markets, he said.

The top Colorado industries which export to China include electronics, semiconductors and computer equipment, animal hides, and transport equipment, according to the mayor.

Jim Reis, president of the Denver World Trade Centre, said local businesses seek more information about doing business with China than any other country.

China, with 1.3 billion consumers, offers tremendous potential for US companies to capitalize on opportunities that will be created by China's accession into the WTO and the normalization of trade relations with China, he said.

Colorado's exports of manufactured and agricultural products to the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong stood at US$595 million last year, an increase of 14.9 per cent over 1999. It is the state's third largest export market after Canada and Japan, according to Andrew Hudson, press secretary to the Denver mayor.

(China Daily 04/13/2001)