When Gov. Jim Douglas took his Vermont delegation to China on a trade mission this week, the Shanghai bureau chief of Forbes magazine took special interest. Russell Flannery grew up in Rutland and is a 1981 graduate of the University of Vermont. He's been a journalist in Asia since 1991.
Flannery took the occasion to interview Douglas. His story appeared today on Forbes.com. You can read the article "Catamount strokes The Dragon"
HERE.
He notes Douglas' success in landing a meeting with Shanghai's mayor. He also notes how few Vermont companies and investors chose to join the governor on the trip. Most of the delegation is made up of chamber and trade organization representatives.
Via e-mail, Flannery told me, "I was surprised that more Vermont companies didn't take the opportunity to come here with him."
Flannery said he sees a demand in China for kind of high-quality environmental products and services Vermont offers. China's poor environmental standards present an opportunity for U.S. businesses, he said.
Does Vermont stand a chance in nabbing some of that business? The fact that Vermont does not have global companies with deep pockets that makes it tough to make individual inroads. "For a lot of companies that don't have anything going in China so far and don't have deep pockets, it would be good to try to think about how to pool resources with other companies as much as possible to share markets or intellectual-property related information, and also to tap into organizations with some degree of China-related business information and expertise such as the Vermont Chamber to get some help starting up."
- Terri Hallenbeck
