A group of executives with Port San Antonio hosted a meeting with officials from Yiwu, China to discuss a formal trade partnership between San Antonio and the Chinese port city.

Yiwu is located in China’s Zhejiang province on the country’s eastern coast. The city has two million people and it is known as a hub where goods from Chinese manufacturers are purchased wholesale and shipped throughout the world.

Port San Antonio’s President and CEO Bruce Miller, Board Chairman Wayne Alexander and Vice President of Business Development Jorge Canavati met with Yiwu Vice Mayor Wang Kuiming and his delegation. The two parties met to discuss ways cargo could be shipped between the United States and China specifically from Yiwu to Port San Antonio.

San Antonio lawyer Jose Villarreal, former Mayor Henry Cisneros and City Council member Elisa Chan made an appeal to the San Antonio business community Tuesday to support a significant city presence for Shanghai Expo 2010, an event expected to draw 70 million people.

San Antonio has an exceptional opportunity to raise its awareness in the world’s most populous nation, Cisneros and Chan said, because Villarreal recently was named the U.S. commissioner general for Shanghai’s world’s fair. That automatically makes him the most popular American in the Chinese city of about 18 million, they said.

Among those offering support Tuesday for a San Antonio presence were CPS Energy Chief Executive Milton Lee and H-E-B Chairman and Chief Executive Charles Butt.

Lee and Butt were among about 50 business, government and education leaders who attended an informational luncheon at the Plaza Club on Tuesday. Butt said his company will import 4,000 containers of Chinese-made goods this year, most of them shipped through Mexican seaport Lázaro Cárdenas and arriving at Port San Antonio.