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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Governor Jon Huntsman and more than a dozen state business leaders will arrive in China tonight.
They're visiting China this week seeking to build business relationships with that nation during a trade mission. The trade mission will include meetings with government leaders in Beijing and Shanghai.
"In China, we are there simply because of their prominence on the world stage and the way in which they are growing so rapidly," Huntsman said. "We need to understand and capture those emerging opportunities."
With a population of more than 1.3 billion, China is widely seen as one of the last largely untapped markets for many products and services.
"The numbers are so overwhelmingly large and vast. Nothing comes close to resembling the future of the China market in terms of sheer disposable income in the coming years," Huntsman said. "It's hard to imagine where this relationship is going to be in the next 20 years.
"The one thing we can do is try to develop a relationship with leaders in China so that we're known and recognized and given a level playing field."
Business leaders joining Huntsman hope to take advantage of whatever doors the governor can open. "Title means a lot in China, and having the governor there in China is wonderful," Wencor President Russell Adamson said.
The Springville-based aircraft parts distributor will announce a new joint venture with a Chinese company, Huaseng Science and Technology, during the trip. China already accounts for about $2 million of the company's annual sales of nearly $150 million.
Several nutritional supplement companies are coming on the trip, including Provo-based Tahitian Noni Beverages and Nu Skin Enterprises, which markets personal care products.
Nu Skin began selling its products in China in 2003 is the second U.S. company to obtain a direct selling license in China, according to Kara Schneck, the company's senior director of corporate communications.
Last year, Chinese customers accounted for $102 million of the company's $1.2 billion in revenue, Schneck said.
The business leaders, Huntsman and Utah House Speaker Greg Curtis will meet with the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service, U.S. Ambassador Clark Randt and China's Minister of Commerce, tourism officials and the equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration.
Curtis says this it the state's chance to move beyond exporting minerals and metals and importing cheap consumer goods to exchanging nutritional products and technology.
"China has exported to us for years," says Curtis. "This is about us being able to take things we produce - technology, software and other products - to China."
The trip is being paid for by Huntsman, according to Lisa Roskelley, a spokeswoman for the governor. The other participants are also responsible for their own travel expenses.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
