Bryan Thompson leads a city of only 15,000 people, but the mayor hasn't let Brunswick's small population discourage his big plans for working with China.

In a country where government titles convey prestige, Mr. Thompson has rubbed shoulders with counterparts leading cities nearly as populous as the whole state of Georgia.

Brunswick has linked up with two inland cities hundreds of miles apart in the last two years. A coastal tourist town with the third largest auto port in the U.S., Brunswick shares little with either Chinese partner. The common thread is Mr. Thompson's unlikely friendship with a Communist Party official.

While serving as party chief of Ganzhou, a city of nearly 9 million in Jiangxi province, Pan Yiyang visited Brunswick to formalize their relationship. Less than a year later, his government paid for 25 Brunswick students to fly to his city and participate in an educational program.

In October, Mr. Thompson took a group of companies and local leaders to the northern province of Inner Mongolia, where Mr. Pan is now vice governor.

With his help, Brunswick became a friendship city with Ordos, a coal-mining town that has become a poster-child for overbuilding in China. Called a “ghost city” by the foreign press, a new district built for a million people is still largely empty. But Mr. Thompson was wowed by the development, noting that building ahead of demand is common in Chinese cities preparing for mass urbanization.   

"It's quite something, quite magnificent," he said of the city's facilities, which included a new library, museum and stadium. He also saw a park where 40-foot stallion statues reflected the local Mongol culture.

Relatively few foreigners go to places like Jiangxi and Inner Mongolia, which lie beyond the glitz of Shanghai, the polish of Beijing and the factory meccas of the Pearl River Delta. But Georgia leaders at the state, city and county levels have been delving deeper into China.

For Brunswick, forging stronger ties in lesser-known regions has helped gain an audience across China. Mr. Thompson spoke on entering the U.S. market at the China Automakers Go Abroad Forum in Wuhan and also visited Tianjin, where a Brunswick manufacturer is eyeing new business connections.

While Mr. Thompson was crisscrossing the country, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal was on his own four-city mission.

"It points to the further opening up of the channels of communication between ... Georgia and China in that we all end up there at the same time," Mr. Thompson said.

On a day trip to Changsha, the capital of Hunan, Mr. Deal signed an agreement to explore business and educational exchanges with the province, the birthplace of the late Chairman Mao Zedong and the cradle of China's Communist Party.

The main purpose of the trip was to visit Sany Group, a concrete pumping equipment manufacturer that has invested $60 million in Peachtree City. During the meeting, Sany Heavy Industry Chairman Liang Wengen announced a plan to invest $25 million more in Georgia, hiring 300 engineers for a new research and development center at its assembly plant over the next five years.

The governor said Sany should represent the first of many business collaborations between the state and the province, but he didn't narrow his focus too much.

Mr. Deal also visited Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao, a coastal city home to Hisense Group, an appliance and flat-panel TV giant that has its North American base and a recently expanded R&D center in Gwinnett County. Mr. Deal announced on the trip that Qingdao would be the site of Georgia's second economic office in China. The first opened in Beijing in 2008.

Chris Cummiskey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said the Qingdao outpost will open next year. Being the first state represented there will give Georgia a leg up in the growing port city.

"The people who are there first and really put their flag down first I think have an advantage in the long run because the province and the city know that you were there making a commitment before everyone else was," Mr. Cummiskey told GlobalAtlanta.

Many Georgia communities have taken that same approach when forging China ties.

While Atlanta still lacks a Chinese sister city, many of its surrounding areas have stepped up and signed their own agreements. Sandy Springs is linked with Taicang, a city near Shanghai. DeKalb County is connected with a district of Ningbo. The Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce has gone so far as to set up an office in its partner city of Wuxi, a technology manufacturing center also near Shanghai.

Technology companies, especially those with a renewable energy component, are being targeted by the Metro Atlanta Chamber during two or three China missions per year, said Matthew Patterson, the chamber's advanced manufacturing director.

Also in October and also separate from the governor's mission, Mr. Patterson and other chamber leaders traveled to China and visited multiple cities while continuing a five-year effort to land more Chinese investment.

"Despite all the news about tariff threats and yuan appreciation, we perceive China to be a hunting ground for us in terms of attracting clean-tech companies to the United States and in Atlanta," Mr. Patterson said at a Dec. 1 China panel in Atlanta.

On the three-week trip, the chamber delegation visited companies involved with solar and wind energy, electric vehicles, LED lighting and advanced batteries in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen and elsewhere.

And the trips aren't just in one direction. Last week, Mr. Thompson, the Brunswick mayor, hosted a group from the China Machinery Industry Federation, a major trade group whose members span industry sectors from automotive to mining equipment. On Dec. 1, a separate group of 25 government officials from Jiangxi province visited Atlanta. 

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