The headline to watch during China President Hu Jintao’s  State Visit to the US later this month? His itinerary.  Rather than the standard shuffle between DC and NYC, this itinerary  includes a stop in the ‘real America’ outside of  the ‘bubbles’ of Washington DC and New York City.  For the purposes of this trip, ‘real America’ is Chicago.

This represents, of course, a polite and deft gesture of respect to the hometown of Hu’s host at the State Dinner in Washington.  But the itinerary signifies far more:  a shift in China’s outward focus from Wall Street to Main Street.

In the post-GFC landscape,  this is a tectonic tremor worth heeding.  Expect a visit to a Main Street company with Chinese ownership and lots of U.S. employees in an embattled industry sector. Expect the U.S.-China storyline in 2011 to shift in degree from currency rates and the U.S. bond market toward rates of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) and in-bound support of the U.S. job market.

For USA regions angling for Chinese FDI to support their local jobs & their regional economic development, the key to success will be aligning regional assets with US-China national level priorities  — whether in clean energy or in other strategic sectors.  Several key vectors of national/regional alignment were created this fall when the U.S. Department of Energy and other Federal agencies awarded:

  • Detroit and the University of Michigan with a U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC) for Clean Energy Vehicles;
  • The University of West Virginia lead role in a consortium for a U.S.-China CERC for Clean Coal;
  • The Lawrence Berkeley Lab with a U.S.-China CERC for Building Efficiency;
  • Greater Philadelphia and Penn State University with a national Energy Innovation Hub for Building Efficiency —  the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster (GPIC) — at the Navy Yard.

The first half of the Obama Administration’s engagement with China to tackle the challenge of 21st energy took place in Washington and New York.  The next chapter will take place in Detroit, the Bay Area, Philadelphia and other regional markets around the country.  As China reinvents itself, it will partner with regions that step forward to reintroduce themselves on the global dance-floor.

It will be an awkward dance at times.  But not a dance that will pay to sit out.  The dance ticket is to tomorrow’s world.

BusinessWeek took an excellent snapshot of this moment’s step in the global pas-de-deux with its January 3, 2011 piece on “Chinese Plants Grow on U.S. Turf.”