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Expo aims to forge trade links to China

Small and midsize  firms are the focus for breaking into the bay area market.

By JAMES THORNER
Published October 22, 2006

TAMPA — Geography and cultural affinity have made Latin America and Europe the Tampa Bay area’s top trading and investment partners.

China seems determined to leapfrog into their ranks, exemplified by the arrival of about 60 government and business leaders from the trade and industrial dynamo of Shanghai.

China Expo 2006, scheduled Monday to Wednesday at downtown Tampa’s Hyatt Regency, is meant to break the ice between business communities that are largely forbidden cities to one another.

“China’s a growing economic power, but in terms of impact in Tampa Bay it’s really not been much,” said H.J. Yang, who organized the expo as president of the new Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Tampa Bay.

On the assumption that big multinational firms are already entrenched in Asia, Yang has designed the expo for small- and medium-sized American companies.

“The Fortune 500 companies are already there,’’ said Yang, a former University of South Florida professor turned real estate investor.

Monday brings invitation-only sessions, including a visit by the Chinese delegation to the Port of Tampa. The first container ship directly linking Tampa and China — from Shanghai, no less — arrived at the port in August.

On Tuesday the expo opens to the public. Speeches will outline how to break into China. Trade is on the agenda, but so is outsourcing, including the much-maligned practice of shipping computer-based work overseas.

The greater Shanghai region lies along the mouth of the Yangtze River and accounted for about $19-billion worth of trade with the United States last year.

China as a whole is Florida’s 15th largest market, absorbing $690-million in exports last year. Those exports, led by chemicals and scrap metal, were less than a quarter of the $3.1-billion in goods sent to Brazil, Florida’s biggest export market.

The Shanghai delegation, estimated at 60, will include a mix of business and government leaders (a distinction fuzzy in China’s quasi-Communist economic system). Construction, banking, textiles, paper, lacquer work and agriculture will be represented.

Chinese companies are scarce on the ground here, even if you count Taiwanese-owned Avalon Global Group, a St. Petersburg company that runs Payless Car Rental System.

But other locally based companies are immersed in the Far East, if not specifically in Shanghai. Rooms To Go, the Seffner based furniture chain, gets most of its stock from China. St. Petersburg’s Jabil Circuit and Tampa’s Syniverse Technologies have operations there.

And then there are small operations like Fletcher Morgan’s in St. Petersburg. Morgan, a baking pan inventor incorporated as Heartland Ventures, calls manufacturing in China rewarding but challenging. The top issue: quality control.

 Morgan has hired two layers of Chinese inspectors to ensure that the pans meet American standards.
“It’s an ongoing battle at the factory. They’ll say, 'It’s just tiny little sharp spot. That can’t hurt anything.’ Yes, it can. They can sue you in America,” Morgan said.

Organizers expect the expo to succeed in its prime function of introducing the Chinese to the Tampa Bay area. But will the introductions lead to bigger things?

“This is their first trip to this area,” said Windy Zou, a Syniverse executive who helped organize the expo. “I wouldn’t expect many contracts to be signed.”

[Last modified October 22, 2006, 07:36:03]