Governor Deval L. Patrick plans to bring along more than a dozen life sciences and clean energy executives when he travels to China for a trade mission tomorrow.
During the weeklong trip, Patrick plans to hold a series of meetings with government, business, and academic officials in Beijing and Shanghai in an effort to help Massachusetts companies collaborate more with their Chinese counterparts.
"This is the first in a series of steps the governor wants to take to strengthen the relationship between Massachusetts and China," said spokeswoman Becky Deusser.
Genzyme Corp. spokesman Bo Piela said two company executives, one based in China and the other in Singapore, will participate in portions of the trip. Piela said the Cambridge biotech already has two small offices in China and is considering building a research or manufacturing facility in the country. Genzyme sells three drugs in China.
"The trip will allow us to build relationships and provide access to key officials," Piela said.
According to a schedule of the trip released yesterday, Patrick is slated to outline his vision for collaboration at a public keynote address on Monday in Beijing.
But most of the meetings in Beijing and Shanghai, including a tour of Shanghai Electric Co. and meetings with chief executives of Chinese companies, are closed to reporters.
Deusser said most of the events were closed at the request of the Chinese government. She said she wasn't sure whether Patrick would attend two cultural events on the agenda, a trip to Beijing's Forbidden City and a visit to a nearby section of the Great Wall.
The Patrick administration said the $200,000 cost of the trip will be paid by Massport, which operates Logan Airport, and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a quasi-government agency committed to boosting Massachusetts' life sciences and clean energy industries.
Timothy Wilkinson, an associate professor of marketing at Montana State University in Billings, Mont., said he was originally skeptical of the value of such foreign trade missions.
But after studying the issue, he found evidence they can lead to increased foreign investment in a state, though he couldn't confirm they led to increased exports.
"I have a much more positive viewpoint than when I first started looking at it," Wilkinson said. He said the trips are particularly useful when they include executives from emerging companies with little international trade experience that need help to get started.
"The fact is that a governor can open doors," Wilkinson said.
In addition to Genzyme, executives from several local life sciences companies, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Novartis AG, Nypro Inc., ViaCell Inc., and Biogen Idec Inc., are scheduled to participate in the trip.
The clean energy industry will be represented by Wilson Turbopower Inc., Advanced Electron Beams, Satcon Corp., Cape Wind Associates LLC, and Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials LLC, among others.
Patrick will also be accompanied by a number of government and industry officials, including two Cabinet secretaries, University of Massachusetts president Jack Wilson, and UMass Medical School professor Craig Mello, who won a Nobel Prize for his research into a new way to silence genes called RNAi.
Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com.
