Missouri opened its first trade office in China in 2004 under the leadership of then-Governor Bob Holden, now the Chairman and President of U.S. Heartland China Association. Despite the ebb and flow of interest at the state level, China remains one of Missouri’s top export markets. In 2022, Missouri shipped a record-breaking $2 billion in goods exports to China. Educational institutions in Missouri have many established partnerships with Chinese universities, such as the Washington University-Fudan University joint EMBA program that celebrated the 20th anniversary in 2022. However, Missouri state leaders have maintained a “tough on China” stance, with Governor Mike Parson urging the Missouri State Employees Retirement System to divest in China. Despite these challenges, Missouri stands as a key player in Heartland-China collaboration. In April 2023, the U.S. Heartland China Association organized the 3rd Annual U.S.-China Agriculture Roundtable in St. Louis, hosting the largest Chinese provincial agriculture delegation in recent years. St. Louis witnessed multiple Chinese delegations in 2023, with officials presenting a symbolic dragon boat to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the partnership between St. Louis and Nanjing. Notably, the Missouri Historical Society’s Chinese American Collecting Initiative aims to catalog and preserve historical artifacts, including a recent collaboration with students to protect a Chinese graveyard in Valhalla Cemetery. Mayor Barbara Buffaloe of Columbia participated in USHCA’s 2023 Heartland Mayors Delegation to China to explore opportunities for city-to-city collaborations around energy transition, climate mitigation, and green economy.

 Despite the ebb and flow of interest at the state level, China remains one of Missouri’s top export markets. In 2022, Missouri shipped a record-breaking $2 billion in goods exports to China.

Missouri has for the past decade annually generated above $1.5 billion from exporting commodities to China, excluding the trade war period of 2018-2019 which saw the state’s total exporting revenue decrease to around just $1 billion. The cause of this decline is clear enough, as Missouri is one of several Heartland states whose main crop–soybeans–rely on the Chinese market, and Missouri’s exports to China are dominated by soybeans with 61% of the state’s exports being oilseeds and grains. During the trade war, Missouri’s exporting to China slumped by a factor of 41% from 2017 to 2018; Chinese tariffs on American soybeans saw Missouri’s exporting of the commodity drop to just $212 million in 2018 as compared to $1.1 billion in 2021.

Sawmill and wood products became one of Missouri’s top exports to China for the first time in 2020, and grew by 19% in 2021, a boom for Missouri as China is the biggest importer of U.S. hardwood since the country cannot harvest enough domestically to meet demand. The Show-Me State previously benefited from travel and tourism from China above the Heartland’s average, but has declined in recent years from a high in 2016 with $330 million in revenue to just $171 million in 2019 as Chinese tourism slowed, with a near total loss due to the pandemic in 2020.

In recent years, the sale of American farmland to foreign countries–namely China–has been making headlines, and Missouri is no exception. A bill was introduced in 2021 to adopt stricter laws around foreign land ownership in the state to better track the existing law that no more than 1% of land was to be owned by a foreign firm. There remains however, a bright future for China-Missouri relations, as evinced by the recent visit of Ambassador Qin Gang to St. Louis for a delayed celebration of the 40th anniversary of the St. Louis-Nanjing sister city relationship, as well as attending a Climate Smart Agriculture Roundtable hosted by USSEC to discuss areas of collaboration between the US and China on the topic (read more here).

However, Missouri state leaders have maintained a “tough on China” stance, with Governor Mike Parson urging the Missouri State Employees Retirement System to divest in China. Despite these challenges, Missouri stands as a key player in Heartland-China collaboration. In April 2023, the U.S. Heartland China Association organized the 3rd Annual U.S.-China Agriculture Roundtable in St. Louis, hosting the largest Chinese provincial agriculture delegation in recent years. St. Louis witnessed multiple Chinese delegations in 2023, with officials presenting a symbolic dragon boat to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the partnership between St. Louis and Nanjing. Notably, the Missouri Historical Society’s Chinese American Collecting Initiative aims to catalog and preserve historical artifacts, including a recent collaboration with students to protect a Chinese graveyard in Valhalla Cemetery. Mayor Barbara Buffaloe of Columbia participated in USHCA’s 2023 Heartland Mayors Delegation to China to explore opportunities for city-to-city collaborations around energy transition, climate mitigation, and green economy.

Educational institutions in Missouri have many established partnerships with Chinese universities, such as the Washington University-Fudan University joint EMBA program that celebrated the 20th anniversary in 2022.

This data and content is updated periodically. The most recent update was January 2024.