ASPEN, United States, April 2 (Xinhua) -- As preparations for the 2022 Winter Olympics ramp up, perhaps no business exchange better embodies global progress than America producing the snow that falls from China's skies.

American ski industry executives are crossing the Pacific more than ever to help Chinese officials gear up for the upcoming Beijing Winter Games.

"I've made two trips to China in just the past few months," said Brooke VanderKelen, who spearheads sales and marketing efforts for Snow Machines Inc., or SMI.

SMI is a family-run business in Michigan that designs, builds, installs, and supplies snowmaking equipment and systems to 800 resorts on four continents worldwide, and is the American industry leader.

When SMI sold China's Yabuli Resort two Standard PoleCat snow guns in 1995, it became the first American snow maker to jump the Pacific.

Yabuli, located in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, was one of only a handful of ski resorts in the country back then.

Today, there are 568 ski areas across China, according to government data, representing a stunning growth that parallels China's economic explosion in the past 20 years.

The sport is especially popular with young business managers from China's burgeoning middle class of 300 million, according to BusinessinAsia.com.

With most of China's resorts located north of Beijing, urban millennials from as far away as Fujian and Zhuhai, as well as Shanghai and Hong Kong, fly north to resorts to ski regularly, the business website observed.

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