The western U.S. state of Utah wants its relationship with China to be a powerful example of successful cooperation for the rest of the nation, a former state House speaker has said.
Through cooperation, Utah and China can get things done faster, Greg Hughes told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"China does everything faster. I mean you build cities in a blink. You build rail lines. You build roads," he said. "We have to catch up and speed up, but we can do those together and I think that powerful example will spread."
Other states, he added, will see what Utah and China are doing and want to follow suit, because they will want to make sure that they are part of the kind of success Utah and China are realizing.
Hughes has been a House member of Utah for over a decade and served as the House speaker between 2015 and 2018, during which he visited China under a decade-old, sub-national exchange mechanism, part of the long, friendly history between China and Utah.
China's development left on him a deep impression. "My jaw droped," he recalled. "There is an economic growth that I don't think people in the United States realize unless they've had the chance to be in China."
China now is one of Utah's most important trading partners. Utah's trade with China totaled about 4 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, and Chinese tourists bring more than 140 million dollars into Utah's economy each year, according to World Trade Center Utah.
Speaking of the ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China, Hughes said there is apprehension in the state's business community and recent moves by Washington make it harder for some companies.
However, Hughes said he feels positive about the long-term prospect. "We hope that very soon we're going to see barriers lowered so that both the United States and China will be able to trade with one another more than we are right now," he added.
Utah has seen its ties with China, which have gone much beyond economic and trade cooperation, as an indispensable part of its growth for now and in the future, state officials and entrepreneurs have said.
"Really for Utah, we need partners in China. We understand the global supply chain is the future of all of our economy. Your economy, our economy, all depends on that global supply chain," Hughes stressed.
"In Utah, we're more hopeful than we're fearful, but we really do need to see our countries come together," he noted. "When voices of fear turn countries away from each other, ... you will have people in Utah say: That's not our enemy. That's our friend. We need each other."
