City of San Benito, state and county officials are shown with Chinese businessmen who visited the area recently. The Chinese businessmen and area dignitaries are pictured gathering inside the San Benito Municipal Building. (City of San Benito photos)
Special to the NEWS
A group of Guangzhou, China businessmen arrived in San Benito March 29 to begin a tour of this area, seeking potential investment opportunities.
Their visit was a direct result of the February trip to Shenzhen by Mayor Joe H. Hernandez and City Manager Manuel Lara. Meetings between the officials and businessmen resulted in invitations to visit San Benito and Cameron County, according to the mayor.
The group engaged in an extensive visit to the Port of Brownsville, the Port Isabel-San Benito Navigation District, and several locations in San Benito.
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3 comments
The way I see it, those of us in agriculture will benefit, possibly. price of grain has been low, hopefully it will go up enough to benefit farmers and not impact consumers, the cost of doing business is high for farmers.
China, officially the People’s Republic of China (PRC), is the world’s most populous country with a population of over 1.3 billion. China is already the world’s largest consumer of wheat, rice and soybean meal, and trails only the United States in the case of corn.
Much of the grain that China imported last year was not for consumption, but for storage in case of crises.
The real interest by the Chinese government is in the agricultural aspect of the Rio Grande Valley and the convenience of the Port of Brownsville for exporting.
The only investment interest China has is in our grain production! Why would they be interested in investing in factories here when their primary natural resource is lots of “cheap labor”?
Whether we like it or not, we are going to be sharing our grain harvest with the Chinese. It won’t matter how much it raises our food prices.
Only time will tell!
Good work!!! Hopefully we will see some positive result