国际英语新闻：Feature: U.S. investors eye new frontier in Chinese market

NEW YORK, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- When investors open their books for a new year, without doubt that China will be a hot spot that they can't afford to miss. And for many who have closely followed the country's rise from economic slowdown, there are still uncovered opportunities lying in this vastly diversified market.

    "We believe that there's a lot of momentum in the market," Matt Comyns, CEO of JLM Pacific Epoch, told reporters. Comyns has compiled a list of 60 reasons to be bullish about China, one of which is the great potential in many cities whose names most westerners haven't even heard of.

    "China has more than 100 cities with more than 1,000,000 people in (each)," he said. "The story of the recovery has been in the second and the third-tier cities."

    To explore business opportunities in less known Chinese cities has become more appealing. In late September, 2009, world's leading mail system provider Pitney Bowes inked a deal with Digital China, in a bid to expand its business to small- and medium-size companies across China.

    The Stamford, Connecticut based company entered Chinese market more than a decade ago, but its high-end hardware and software tools and services that support effective customer communications have been only available to large companies in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

    "With the tremendous growth of the Chinese economy, (there are) more and more opportunities for small and medium sized companies to do mailings for both transaction purposes and marketing purposes," Michael Monahan, CFO of Pitney Bowes told Xinhua.

    Digital China appears to be a perfect partner. As China's largest information technology distribution and service company, Digital China has a presence in six hundred Chinese cities and a network of more than five thousand resellers and system integration partners.

    Many U.S. investors have noticed that the Chinese government's vast efforts on inland/western development have led to GDP gains in inland provinces that have significantly outstripped traditional coastal counterparts.

    Comyns gave an example that 13 provincial level regions reported double-digit GDP growth in 2008, with Inner Mongolia region leading with 16.2 percent GDP growth compared to 7 percent for the coastal Shanghai region.

    One Chinese company which is rooted in the Inner Mongolia region has made it to the Nasdaq Global Select Market in 2009.

    Zishen Wu, CEO of Yongye International, Inc., didn't impress Wall Street investment bankers when he showed up in old worn shoes covered with dust. But when he told them his company's patented plant nutrient would boost production by 10 to 30 percent and has been popular among Chinese farmers, he finally went home with the largest investment a Chinese agriculture technology company has obtained in 2008.

    Just a year later, Yongye successfully switched from OTC board.

    More and more companies like Yongye have attracted U.S. investors. By December, 2009, Nasdaq has had 32 new listings from China, including 9 initial public offerings (IPOs), Robert McCooey, senior vice president of New Listings and Capital Markets of the NASDAQ OMX Group, told Xinhua.

    One highlight of this year's new listings from China, McCooey pointed out, is the "great geographic diversity."