WASHINGTON - To most Chinese people, the city of Atlanta is known for hosting the Centennial 1996 Olympic Games, as the headquarters for big US companies such as Coca-Cola and CNN, or the major location in the famous novel turned into a classic movie, Gone with the Wind.

However, Atlanta seldom comes to mind as a place to do business with China.

This lack of awareness is seen as a major challenge when promoting trade ties with China, according to Jorge Fernandez, vice-president of Global Commerce with the Metro Atlanta Chamber (MAC). "Very few people in China know that Atlanta is also a place to do business," he told China Daily. Atlanta is considered the business capital of the southeastern US.

Fernandez said many Chinese business people he met in China were "very surprised" to know the investment opportunities in this area.

Metro Atlanta is the second fastest growing metro area in the US and has the 10th largest GDP in the country, according to MAC.

Though Atlanta's business relationship with China dates back to the 1980s when Coca-Cola started to enter the Chinese market, it was only in the last five or six years that MAC, the only regional economic development organization in the region, began to intensify its efforts to enhance this commercial relationship with the world's second-largest economy.

Since Fernandez began guiding the international investment recruitment arm of the chamber in 2006, he carefully mapped out his strategies to woo Chinese investors.

"All the (US) states are competing for Chinese investment," he said. "We have to prove that it's value-added for Chinese companies to choose Atlanta against those gateway cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City and Chicago."

He listed five reasons to differentiate Atlanta from those competitors: the robust local economy, global access, a strong talent pool, a relatively low cost of living and business costs but a high quality of life.

With those strong fundamentals, developing and maintaining good business relations, or guanxi in Chinese, is very crucial, he said.

The chamber reached out to local Chinese-American communities which they believe can play an influential role in China, and "we make sure we go to China as often as we can".

Fernandez cannot remember how many times he has been to China. The first visit happened in 2004 when he worked for Delta, an Atlanta-based airline company. After he joined the chamber, he began to go to China at least once or twice every year, sometimes three times a year.

In October, the chamber and Georgia Governor Nathan Deal are planning to go to China.

"We always have delegations to visit China, because we understand this is the best way to promote relations," he said.

The MAC people will go to not only the major cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but also secondary cities such as Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Qingdao, Changsha and Nanjing.

"We have been to a considerable number of Chinese cities," he said. "There are a lot of opportunities (in secondary cities) but not everybody goes to those cities."

Because of those strategies, the reach to the Chinese market is "fairly successful", he said.

So far, more than 50 Georgia companies have operations in China and about 20 Chinese companies are doing business in Atlanta, the majority of it coming in the past five years.

The big names include SANY, the largest heavy equipment manufacturer in China; Hisense, China's major electronics manufacturer; Huawei, China's largest telecommunications equipment supplier and ZTE, another telecommunication equipment giant.

But Fernandez is not satisfied and wants to see more trade with China and more Chinese companies coming to America.

"China cannot be treated just as a market. China plays a big role for every global company or any company that has aspirations to go global," he said.

China Daily