On the heels of Tennessee's push to strengthen business ties with China, Nashville's Dr. Ming Wang has started the Tennessee Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

The Nashville-based organization is the first in the state and has dual purposes: helping Tennessee-based companies conduct business in China, and attracting China-based businesses to Tennessee.

"I want us to grow our trade in China," Wang says. "We need to be better prepared and better organized."

Published Oct. 18, 2010 in Tennessee Voices

Recently, The Tennessean published an article by Professor Richard Grant about less governmental control being the key factor responsible for the booming Chinese economy today.

As the founding president of the Tennessee Chinese Chamber of Commerce, I have become familiar with what is going on in China in recent years, as our chamber has been helping Tennessee companies to increase export to China and also helping Chinese manufacturing firms to move to Tennessee to create more jobs here.

Dr. Ming Wang has taken his ophthalmology expertise to China, where he's bought an ownership stake in the country's largest private eye hospital system and trained thousands of eye surgeons.

Wang, who emigrated from China 24 years ago, began taking a more active role in the 1.3 billion-person country after starting the Wang Vision Institute in 2002. He believed the rapid adoption of cellphones and automobiles would translate into potential for eye surgery locations.

"China's economic growth is unprecedented. Never before in world history has there been such rapid economic growth with both speed and amplitude with such a big population," Wang says. "When I came to the U.S. years ago, 90 percent of the vehicles on the street were bicycles. When I went back in April, 90 percent of the vehicles were cars."