China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Commerce to get ‘open, connected’
Chinese-led factories in America, direct flights, aircraft orders make industry captains optimistic about future
“Through my brother’s eyes, I saw factory after factory closed, unemployment grew, Dayton [a city in Ohio] became hollowed out,” said Stephen A Orlins, president of the National Committee on United StatesChina Relations, but great changes have taken place due to investment from China.
Orlins was quite emotional when recalling the grand opening of the newest US facility of Fuyao Glass Industry Group, a Chinese company leading the world’s automotive glass manufacturing, in early October in his hometown.
“That morning two months ago, I watched the rebirth of a community because Fuyao Glass, a Chinese company, took over the closed General Motors factory, and created 2,500 US jobs,” Orlins said at the organization’s 50th anniversary gala last week.
Upon completion, Fuyao Glass America, a nearly 470,000-squaremeter facility housed in General Motors’ former assembly plant, will be the largest glass fabrication plant in the world.
This represents $450 million in total investment by Fuyao, the largest Chinese investment in Ohio history and the eighth largest direct foreign investment in the US in the past decade.
“I know I have glimpsed the promised land of a constructive US-China relations and I know we’ll get there,” Orlins said, paraphrasing Dr Martin Luther King Jr from his famous civil rights speech in 1966.
Orlins was not alone in having a glimpse of sound relations between the world’s largest developed country and the largest developing country.
“China is enormously important to our success as a company and as a major US exporter,” said Raymond L Conner, vice chairman of Boeing, the largest US exporter, in his speech at the event.
More than 50 percent of the commercial aircraft operating in China are Boeing airplanes, he said.
Boeing has forecast that in the next 20 years, China will demand 6,810 new aircraft with a total value of about $1 trillion. This demand will make China the biggest customer of Boeing commercial airplanes.
Chinese customers are expected to take delivery of 30 percent of all Boeing’s top-selling 737 models and about 25 percent of all aircraft produced in Washington State and South Carolina, Conner said.
He said: “Obviously, these deliveries are very significant to the almost 76,000 Boeing employees who design, assemble and support our commercial airplanes.
“It’s also very significant to the 1.5 million people in jobs who are supported through our supply chain here in the United States, and also for the communities, where all these businesses and people live and work across all 50 states.
“Clearly the Chinese aviation market continues to grow, so we’re going to continue to see the number of the US jobs at Boeing and throughout our supply chain continue to grow as well.”
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