St. Louis group heading back to China for more air cargo talks

Another group of local leaders is heading back East to try to get the proposed Chinese air cargo hub off the ground.

A half-dozen St. Louis area economic development and aviation officials will leave Thursday for Beijing for a week of talks with Chinese authorities, said Mike Jones, chair of the newly created Midwest-China Hub Commission.

The goal? To launch studies of just how much cargo could potentially move between China and St. Louis, in both directions.

"This is not a theoretical conversation," Jones said. "This is about how we engage to move this to the next step, to prove out this idea."

It comes a year after a big delegation of St. Louis area politicians and business leaders signed agreements in Beijing to study the hub, and after three high-level Chinese visits to St. Louis since then. Last month, the country's ambassador to the U.S. spent Chinese New Year in St. Louis, celebrating the launch of the Hub Commission and $1.7 million in federal money to fund its work.

Jones said the commission recently hired AeroStrata, a Houston-based air freight research firm, to help with studies of the potential two-way traffic between China and the Midwest.