About 30 executives from US multinationals and commerce associations attend a meeting at the residence of Chinese Consul General in San francisco. (Photo provided by Ren Faqiang)

About 30 executives from US multinationals and commerce associations told Luo Linquan, Chinese Consul General to San Francisco, recently at a meeting that they are confident about China’s economy.

Gary E. Dickerson, CEO of Applied Materials, one of the world’s largest suppliers of fabrication equipment to semiconductor, LCD and solar PV cell manufacturers, said that China is one of the company’s biggest and most important markets. They are optimistic about the potential in China.

According to Reuters’ report in March, Applied Materials will invest nearly 4 billion yuan ($615 million) for expansion in China over the next few years. In the recently reported fiscal first-quarter 2016, total sales in China were $497 million, up 21.2% year over year, while orders surged 56.1% to $462 million.

Ed Baker, head of Growth at Uber, said that globally China is the company’s fastest growing market. Beijing, Shanghai and others are among the top ones in its international markets. 

According to US Department of Commerce, China has become No.1 trading partner of the US with the total volume of bilateral trade of $598 billion last year. Among all the 50 states, California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Alaska have been playing a big part in business cooperation with China, and bilateral trade of the five states with China reached 202 billion last year, accounting for 1/3 of China-US trade volume. Chinese investment in the 5 states reached 3.6 billion in 2015, with a total investment of 9 billion.

Luo Linquan said at the meeting that such tremendous success could partly be attributed to the advanced cooperation mechanism. According to the consensus between President Xi Jinping and Governor Brown, California and seven Chinese provinces established the “Trade and Investment Cooperation Joint Working Group” in 2013, which is the first institutional platform for promoting local economic and trade cooperation between China and US. 

“Last year, during his visit to Seattle, Xi also established the similar relationship with state of Washington. Through these platforms, all the participants could expand trade and investment cooperation, strengthen communication and trust, boost economic growth as well as create jobs together,” said Luo.

Ron Conway, founder of the AngelVest, is a legendary angel investor in Silicon Valley. His firm SV Angel made early investments in PayPal, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, among many others. He thinks that Chinese young generations have stronger sense of innovation. China has great potential with a huge market. 

Ren Faqiang, deputy consul general told the reporter that the total market value of all the participating companies is estimated to be 1.2 trillion. Ed Lee, mayor of San Francisco, Jim Underman, president of Bay Area Council, David Chen, VP of Microsoft, Jeff Moon, VP of Dolby, Vaughan Smith, VP of Facebook among others were invited to attend the meeting at the residence of Chinese Consul General Luo Linquan in San Francisco.