Ethnic Ties Stimulate Asian Trade Washington Takes Lead In Developing Business Links With Pacific Rim

Spurred by commerce and kinship, Washington state has become the leading apostle of an expanding Asian trade relationship that business and political leaders here see as the global wave of the future.

Seattle’s ports are jammed with ships from Japan, China, Russia and other Pacific Rim nations. Its principal employer, Boeing, is the nation’s leading exporter to China. Washington is the only state to maintain trade offices in Shanghai and Vladivostok. Asian trade delegations frequently visit the state capital of Olympia to meet Democratic Gov. Gary Locke, the first Chinese-American governor of a mainland U.S. state.

“Much of our heritage is built upon the contributions of immigrants,” said Locke, whose grandfather came from China as a houseboy. “We have a greater appreciation of the contribution of immigrants and a greater connection with our homelands.”

That connection is increasingly Asian. In a state settled by Yankee and Scandinavian immigrants, Asian Americans make up an estimated 10 percent to 12 percent of the population in the Seattle metropolitan area, one of the nation’s major international trade centers. The growing Asian presence includes Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland and significant numbers of Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos and Vietnamese.

“Seattle is not Detroit,” said David Tang, a lawyer who was born and raised in Hong Kong. “We look upon Asia as marketing opportunities, not competition. This creates a different psychological approach. We’re a gateway where our economic life depends on trade.”

Tang advises U.S. firms that do business in Asia and Asian firms that do business here. There are plenty of both in Washington, which has 275 foreign-owned companies, including 141 headquartered in the state. Washington has 30 consulates and 73 sister cities or ports abroad.

In 1996, more than $87 billion in trade flowed through Washington ports, with imports having a slight edge over exports. Japan was far and away the largest trading partner, followed in order by Canada, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore. Washington has the highest per capita foreign trade of any U.S. state, and one of four jobs in this state depends on trade.

But as Locke suggests, business is not the only motivation for Washington’s ties with Pacific Rim nations.

Tucked away in America’s northwest corner, Washington has felt remote from the national mainstream and inclined to look westward across the Pacific. The state was a pioneer in trading with Japan. Seattle was where the first Chinese ship docked after normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations in the mid-1970s. When an earthquake struck the Soviet Far East, volunteer groups in the Seattle area led a massive drive to send food and other necessities.

Now, Washington is taking the lead in establishing relationships with isolated and famine-threatened North Korea.

Secretary of State Ralph Munro, a Republican who is a longtime advocate of U.S.-China ties, led a goodwill mission in May to North Korea, where xenophobic leaders rule over a closed, totalitarian society, to evaluate humanitarian needs. A shipment of 19 tons of wheat donated by Fisher Mills and Washington wheat growers arrived during his visit.

“Asia is our neighbor, and we will help any nation in need,” he said.

This humanitarian emphasis has wide bipartisan acceptance in Washington, where relationships that might be controversial elsewhere cause little stir. Munro urges officials from other states to visit North Korea. Both he and Locke stress the importance of “people to people” relationships, which they say are prized in Asia.

With the backing of the Legislature, Munro is creating a computerized data base to store information about thousands of contacts between Washington and Asian nations by governments, schools, hospitals, volunteer groups and private citizens.

Because of their reliance on foreign trade, most of the state’s business and political leaders advocate giving China permanent favored trading status and admitting it to the World Trade Organization. On this year’s House vote to extend China’s favored status another year, every member of the nine-member Washington delegation except Republican conservative Linda Smith voted aye.

Business people in Washington are dazzled by the potential of the Chinese market. Bill Bryant, president of a firm that sells agricultural commodities in Asia, estimated that there are 250 million people in the emerging Chinese middle class, about the population of the United States.

And Tang jokingly propounds what he calls his “$1 billion sock theory,” which holds that U.S. firms will prosper if they can sell one pair of socks to 1 percent of the Chinese people.