How an American city is cashing in on China’s ‘made in USA’ desire

China’s Fuling Global hit a dead end when it tried to expand sales of its disposable plastic tableware to a well-known US fast-food chain. The client, one of Fuling’s biggest, would only buy straws made in America.

Two years later, in mid-2016, Fuling was churning out a million straws a day at a US$5 million facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and it plans to expand its new US unit to produce cups and containers.

Fuling wasn’t the first Chinese company to start operations in the Allentown area, an economic anchor of the Lehigh Valley, famous for building the world’s most advanced iron and steel industry before its rapid decline a century later.

Beijing Oriental Yuhong, a maker of advanced weatherproofing materials, also set up a factory last year and at least one other mainland Chinese company is mulling a production base in Allentown to supply customers in the United States, according to the local economic development authority.

More may follow in the wake of a visit by the mayor of Taizhou, Zhejiang province, last month.

Chinese interest in Allentown is showing better results than Chinese diplomacy in Washington, where the first Sino-US Comprehensive Dialogue ended abruptly last week, with little to show. High-level US and Chinese officials including Vice-Premier Wang Yang and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had gathered in Washington to find ways to rebalance their trade relationship.