David Blevins is considering to hire a Chinese-speaking attendant as his first step to get ready for a potential increase of tourists from the rising Asian country.[Special coverage]
"We would love to see more Chinese visitors in Florida," said the suited-up general manager of an economy hotel near Fort Lauderdale airport in response to Xinhua reporters' questions concerning the local tourism industry.
Traditionally, Canadians make up a major part of the international tourists for the Sunshine State, Blevins said. Yet the recent fluctuations of the Canadian dollar might strain the northern neighbor's purchasing power.
"With Florida's sunshine, seafood, beautiful weather and its lower tax, I'm sure more and more Chinese visitors would gradually flood to us, though now they prefer California and New York," he said.
U.S. ECONOMY BENEFITS FROM RISING CHINA
Blevins was not being confident for nothing. Over the past decade, Chinese visitors to the United States have grown nearly 10-fold from 320,000 arrivals in 2006 to over 3 million in 2016, which was designated as "China-U.S. Tourism Year."
California currently attracts 45.5 percent of all Chinese visitors -the highest percentage of any U.S. state, said Caroline Beteta, President and Chief Executive Officer of Visit California in a interview with Xinhua.
"To be exact, 1.3 million Chinese visitors spent 2.6 billion dollars in California in 2016," she added.
By 2020, China will be the largest international tourist source of the Golden State, taking the place of Canada, Visit California projected. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the numbers are expected to grow to 5.7 million arrivals by 2021.H "Over 90 percent of their visitors are Chinese. I won't be working here if there were not so many Chinese customers," said a salesgirl of the MK store at the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in New York, who gave her name as Joyce.
Stephanie Johnson, head of Woodbury's marketing department, told Xinhua that in general, Chinese visitors account for about "one third of our consumers," and as a matter of fact, "Chinese is one of the major service language there."
Indeed, with banners advertizing Union Pay, the Chinese equivalence of Visa or MasterCard, and shopping guides fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese, it is almost hard to tell you are actually in a small town in Central Valley, New York State. No wonder, the Woodbury outlets have been a tax cow for the local Orange County for years.
The U.S. economy has not only benefited from the deep-pocketed Chinese tourists.
Exports of goods from the United States to China had risen by an annual average of 11 percent in the past decade, making China its fastest-growing export market outside North America, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOC).
From 2001 to 2016, U.S. exports of services to China increased 15 fold, with the U.S. service trade surplus rising 29 fold.
As of the end of 2016, non-financial investment in the United States by Chinese enterprises amounted to around 50 billion U.S. dollars, which provided nearly 100,000 jobs across 44 states, the MOC said.
U.S. investment in China has also benefited American firms, 90 percent of which were profitable, as shown by a U.S.-China Business Council survey last year.
"Just give you a sense of broader impact (of Chinese aviation market) on the U.S. economy. Deliveries to China by Boeing support approximately 150,000 U.S. jobs every year. That's an incredible number," said Raymond L. Conner, vice chairman of Boeing Co., the largest U.S. exporter, at an event last December in New York.
Boeing has forecast that in the next 20 years, China will demand 6,810 new aircrafts with a total value of about one trillion U.S. dollars. This demand will make China the biggest customer of Boeing commercial airplanes.
THE HISTORY SPEAKS
According to the MOC, the two-way trade of goods last year exceeded 519.6 billion U.S. dollars, which makes China the United State's largest trading partner, while the United States China's second largest.
Strikingly, the same number was just 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in 1979 when the two countries broke ice in their relations.
The depth and size the bilateral ties have developed are a result of political vision and will move forward through generations of the leaders of the two countries.
"There's a long tradition, from Nixon through Reagan through Clinton, through both Bushes, Obama of strong cooperative ties between United States and China," 73-year-old Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates told Xinhua in a interview.
