The Chinese are Coming -- Part III

In today's Puget Sound Business Journal (one Seattle's leading business journals), the front page article, "Investors from Abroad Eye Washington: China Trend," highlights increased Chinese investment in the Seattle area.  The article quotes a number of local governmental, NGO, and academic leaders talking about their expectations for increased Chinese investment in the Puget Sound area. 

One of the themes of this blog has been that China's increasing wealth inevitably will lead to increased foreign direct investment by Chinese companies.  We blogged about this here, here, and here.  This article describes how Seattle is working to bring those investments here.

Jesse Tam, President and CEO of Regal Financial Bank (a Seattle based community bank with a strong international focus) talked about seeing an increasing volume of Chinese nationals investing in Seattle area real estate.  Joe Borich, director of the Washington State China Relations Council, opines that we are likely to "see more investment efforts targeted at other kinds of companies where the Chinese company would be acquiring technology, management expertise or market share."  He goes on to say that we also likely will see Chinese companies trying to establish their brand name internationally by investing in companies with already established U.S. distribution networks for similar products.  I agree.