Just in case it doesn’t get said in the next couple of days during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Everett, Seattle, Redmond and Tacoma: Thank you for your patience and for being good hosts.
And special thanks to those who had to wait in traffic during the visit. China’s president and a delegation that numbers around 1,000, arrived Tuesday at Everett’s Paine Field prior to an official dinner in Seattle, and was scheduled to visit Boeing’s Everett plant, Microsoft and a Tacoma high school today, then depart Paine Field on Thursday for Washington, D.C. That itinerary has meant a lot of travel along the regional interstates with little advance warning of when and which roads would be closed because of security precautions.
If it’s any consolation, this is why you’re stuck in traffic:
- China is Washington’s largest trading partner. According to statistics from the Washington State China Relations Council and the Washington Council on International Trade, Washington exported $16.7 billion of goods to China in 2013 and $20.7 billion in 2014. Those exports represented about a fifth of all of the state’s exports in 2013. And that trading relationship is growing. Between 2004 and 2013, the state’s exports to China increased 590 percent.
- The top exporter, to no one’s surprise, is the areospace industry and Boeing, which explains China’s interest in arriving in Everett and visiting Boeing. It’s a relationship that is important to the company, but also to Boeing workers and the employees of Boeing suppliers in Snohomish County and the state. Boeing projects that China will need more than 5,500 new planes through 2032, making China its largest potential customer.
- It’s about more than a business relationship between Boeing and China, however. China is one of the state’s top five agricultural markets for apples, wine, cherries, hops and more. Forest products are the state’s fourth largest export to China. Along with the billions in goods, there are also billions in services sent to China from Microsoft and other software companies as well as law and architectural firms in the state.
- And, as China’s middle class has grown, tourism to the state has increased, jumping 45 percent from 2012 to 2013. At the same time, the number of Chinese students attending colleges and universities in the state has increased and represent about 31 percent of all foreign students.
It’s all reason to extend a hand to welcome China.
But being good hosts doesn’t mean we have to be the doormat, particularly when it involves issues where the state, the nation, industry and the American public have concerns about trade, Internet security, intellectual piracy, the environment and human rights.
Peter Jackson, former Herald editorial page editor, notes in a commentary for Crosscut that leaders from Washington state, specifically Microsoft’s former chairman Bill Gates, Gov. Jay Inslee and former governor and former Ambassador to China Gary Locke, are well positioned and have leverage to make the case regarding those concerns while strengthening our economic and cultural ties.
So — if it goes unsaid by others — thanks for doing your part for Washington state’s economy and for international diplomacy.
Correction: An earlier version of this editorial misstated Gary Locke’s status as ambassador to China. He is a former ambassador. Max Baucus, former U.S. senator from Montana is the current U.S. ambassador to China.
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