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A Shanghai marketing director who thinks of himself as a typical Chinese consumer boasted to a group of Madison business people that he loves to follow the lead of millions of Americans and spend his weekends at home watching TV and eating pizza.

The pizza business is booming in China, partly because of that country’s burgeoning love affair with imported dairy products like cheese, said Roger Zhang, who was part of a delegation of Chinese food buyers and marketers that toured Wisconsin last month looking at its agricultural industry.

The delegation was extremely impressed, Zhang said, at a luncheon hosted by the Madison International Trade Association. He mentioned the quality of Wisconsin dairy products, particularly cheese, and added, “this is good timing to access the (Chinese) market. They will get a certain market share in the near future.”

John Umhoefer, Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association executive director, agreed. After data from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection showed that cheese sales to China for the first six months of this year jumped 179 percent compared to the first six months of 2013, Umhoefer said, “The cheese side of the dairy industry is in its infancy in China, but it has promise.”