JINAN, China – The world may be focused on the Beijing Olympics, but Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue spent Thursday talking about trade, healthcare and sustainable development in this eastern Chinese city.

The Governor wrapped up a three-day visit to the capital of China's Shandong province to participate in an organization of state leaders from 7 nations on 6 continents.

Jennifer Brett/jbrett@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Gov. Sonny Perdue with wife Mary at a Zoo Atlanta function this summer. Perdue is in China to take in the Olympics and meet with trade partners.

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For Georgia, the decision to join the Regional Leaders Conference dovetails with an ongoing state effort to build foreign trade links. The combined economies of the 7 regions in the 6-year-old association – including China's Shandong province, the German state of Bavaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Quebec, Canada – have a combined annual gross domestic product of about $2 trillion.

"Georgia has increasingly looked globally for economic development and I thought if Georgia was going to play on that global stage, it had to participate and communicate on the global stage," Perdue said at the conference.

The gathering focused on resource conservation and healthcare and provided opportunities for members to discuss possible economic links.

Perdue met privately with 5 state heads. With the premier of Quebec he discussed possible collaborative work between the states to convert plant matter into fuel, something Georgia is already working on with Rio de Janeiro.

Bavaria invited Georgia to join the alliance and "holds a lot of interest for Georgia in the biolife sciences as well as the alternative energy and nuclear areas," Perdue said. "This is essentially relationship building, friendship building where we can go back and have points of contact" to develop cultural and trade partnerships, he said.

Markus Soder, the state minister of Bavaria, said the group had invited Georgia to become its first U.S. member because the state has a mixed economy with high-tech industry, a strong agricultural sector and deep transportation links.

"We wanted to have a strong partner in the United States and Georgia can make contributions moving forward," he said through an interpreter.