Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation plans to visit Boeing at Paine Field in Everett on the first leg of a trip to the U.S., according to Gov. Jay Inslee’s office.
President Xi will spend Tuesday through Thursday in Seattle and also visit Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond and Lincoln High School in Tacoma. He will also meet with business and government leaders from across the U.S. and offer the only policy speech of his trip at a dinner banquet where dignitaries such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger will be in attendance.
Gov. Jay Inslee, who visited China in 2013 as part of a trade mission to Asia, invited President Xi to Washington, noting the state’s strong economic, academic and cultural relations with China.
“Over the years, Washington companies have developed strong ties with China, and hundreds of millions of citizens use products from Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks and other Washington companies on a daily basis,” Inslee wrote. “We know that our ties with the Chinese Academy of Sciences are just the beginning of a relationship that will allow the carbon pollution reduction goals the U.S. and China recently established to become a reality.”
Inslee appointed former Washington state governors Gary Locke and Chris Gregoire to lead a 30-person welcoming committee. A smaller host committee includes Ray Conner, the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes; Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft; and Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks Coffee.
China is Washington’s largest trading partner, with more than $29 billion of trade in 2014. Nearly a fourth of Washington exports go to China.
President Xi will be the fourth consecutive Chinese leader to visit Seattle — Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao before him all came to the region due to the importance of Seattle’s relationship with China. Hu gave a speech in Everett during his visit.
The last visit of a sitting president from China to Washington was by President Hu in 2006. Washington was also the first state to elect a Chinese-American governor, Locke, who went on to become the first Chinese-American ambassador to China.
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