Chinese investors pour cash into the Glass City of Toledo, Ohio
Chinese investors are pouring money into 'little old' Toledo, a city that has forged unlikely relationships that have become the envy of major centres
The realisation was as surprising as it was momentous. Toledo, long known as Glass City, needed glass, and it could no longer be manufactured locally quickly enough.
So Toledo turned to China to make the 360 panels, weighing 589kg each, that were needed for an extension to the Toledo Museum of Art. Some in the fourth largest city in the state of Ohio resented the move after China supplanted the United States as the world's top glass producer. But in the process, city leaders began an improbable and remarkable relationship.
Over the past seven years since the museum project was completed, the ties between Toledo and China have flourished. Chinese companies have paid more than US$10 million for two local hotels, a restaurant complex and a 69-acre waterfront property. Mayor Michael Bell has taken four trips to China in as many years in search of investors. His business cards are double-sided, in English and Chinese.
Huaqiao University in Fujian province, one of the mainland's largest higher-education institutions, recently signed an agreement to open a branch in Toledo.
There have also been preliminary talks between local officials and a Chinese company about an arrangement in which industrial tools would be produced in China, shipped for assembly in Toledo and labelled "made in the USA", which would allow them to be sold at a premium.
