Hong Kong a big market for Virginia

Virginians can connect to Asia in ways it is hard to guess. 

Take wine, for instance, said Donald C.K. Tong, Hong Kong's top official in the U.S., during an official visit to Virginia yesterday.

While Virginia may not be the first name to spring to a wine lover's tongue, Virginians may not realize that Hong Kong is the world's second-largest wine auction market, said Tong, commissioner of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Washington.

At Hong Kong's international wine and spirits fair in 2008, there were more than 12,000 buyers, Tong said.

"That's not people wandering in from the street. They were buyers, from all over," he said before speaking to students at the University of Richmond.

"We're a big market, with 7 million people. . . . But you should think of Hong Kong as a platform to reach even wider."

Wine is still a small connection. But there are others. Virginia firms from MeadWestvaco to AES have major operations there.

Virginians sold $166 million of goods to Hong Kong last year, led by chemicals, processed foods, and computers and parts.

Though Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, it has its own currency -- the Hong Kong dollar. For 27 years, it has been pegged to the U.S. dollar, at about seven Hong Kong dollars to the greenback.

China's low value against the dollar remains a sore point. Many politicians say the Chinese yuan is deliberately undervalued to keep its export businesses humming. This week, U.S. senators introduced legislation to pressure China to raise the yuan's value.

Expanding into China -- Tong says Hong Kong is a good starting point -- entices American firms because of the sheer size of the country and its rapid economic growth.

Yesterday, the World Bank said it expects China to grow even faster than it thought: by 9.5 percent this year, instead of 9 percent.

"China is, I think, the second-largest export market for us," Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade James S. Cheng told the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce's third annual Business China Forum.

"We want to keep it that way."