NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - There has been a lot of bellyaching about how Chinese goods are flooding the U.S. marketplace and no wonder.

On pace to hit $150 billion this year, Chinese imports to the United States have more than doubled since 1998 -- making the country the prime candidate for the shar-pei that ate everybody's homework. The economy's not generating jobs? It's because they all went to China. U.S. manufacturers can't keep up? It's China and its pesky currency peg.

But attracting little notice amid all this grumbling, U.S. exports to China are surging, climbing 21 percent in the 12 months that ended in August. Set to hit around $27 billion this year, U.S. exports to China appear to have begun growing even faster than Chinese imports to the United States. Which means there are plenty of companies making a pretty penny from China's fast-growing economy.

And this is not just a China-U.S.. dynamic -- China's imports from the rest of the world are growing faster than its exports. Yet this doesn't garner much attention. Why?

First off, the world's trade gap with China is so wide, and getting wider in absolute terms, that it's hard to notice differences of degree between import and export growth. But just as important, the companies that are selling stuff to China are exceedingly boring. Take a gander at the trade statistics and you'll see we're running surpluses in things like basic materials and chemicals. Oh, and animal and vegetable oils, fats and waxes.

These things aren't nearly as sexy as the Boeing planes China is reportedly going to buy to help grease the diplomatic wheels before Premier Wen Jiabao visits the United States in December. But for investors looking to hitch a ride on China's growth, these things may be far more important because they are the things that China really needs to keep making the things it sells to the world rather than sops to throw at its detractors in Washington.

"The story is clearest in the natural resource area," said Carlos Asilis, a portfolio manager with the hedge fund Vega Capital Management. "They import a lot from resource-rich countries like Brazil and Chile. It's no mistake that those are two of the top five performing markets in the world this year."

For investors unwilling to take a roll on such risky markets, putting money in the more developed natural resource-rich countries, like Canada and Australia, is a possibility. And there are, of course, a slew of U.S. basic materials companies that should continue to benefit as China continues to grow.

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The basic materials group could also be a good hedge for investors who worry that the U.S. government is going to succeed in its push for China to revalue its currency. A stronger yuan would likely push world commodity prices higher, spelling higher profits for commodity producers.