Young Touts Asian Markets Ex-Ambassador Says City Has Right Stuff To Excel In That Arena
Spokane’s business community should prepare to expand more heavily into Asian markets after the turn of the century, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday.
Fifty percent of the world’s 14-to-25-year olds will live in Asia by the year 2010, said Andrew Young, the keynote speaker at the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting. A sold-out crowd of 1,200 attended the meeting at the Ag Trade Center.
Spokane is perfectly suited for expansion into Asian markets, Young said, because it has three sought-after industries: agriculture, aerospace and electronics.
“Think of how we’re going to sell goods and services into that market,” Young said. “You are absolutely poised to take off into the future.”
Young speaks from experience when he discusses foreign markets. President Clinton recently appointed Young chairman of the new Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund, a $100 million venture that will help establish small businesses in Southern Africa.
Young, a former pastor who graduated from Hartford Theological Seminary, also said business is ultimately a religious vocation. People who begin businesses, he said, are taking a leap of faith. The growth of business returns volumes to communities in terms of job creation, building homes and educating young people.
“(Adding) 10,000 jobs is going to contribute to the economy in ways you can’t imagine yet,” Young said, referring repeatedly to the goal of Focus 21, an economic development effort affiliated with the chamber.
“The foundation you have laid here is a foundation from which you can launch yourself into a truly creative future.”
Young’s national and international visibility helped land Atlanta, Ga., the Olympic Games in 1996. Young, who was mayor of Atlanta from 1981 to 1989, also served as co-chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games.
What impressed the Olympic committee when it visited Atlanta was the city’s diversity, said Young, who also was a top aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Olympic committee visited a kindergarten class with children of more than 20 nationalities. The children had built an Olympic village out of Legos. When committee members asked the children why the Olympics should be in Atlanta, one 5-year-old responded, “Because we’re a city that’s too busy to hate.”
That sentiment had been a slogan for Atlanta’s chamber of commerce in 1950, Young said, but “little kids still understand.”
Atlanta raised $2.4 billion for the Olympics and spent $2.3 billion. Minority-owned companies did 37 percent of the city’s work in preparing for the Olympics, he said.
“Growing economies include everybody,” Young said. “The more people we include, the better off it will be for the rest of us.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo