Governor Gary Locke’s Remarks
Media Availability Event, China Trip Return—Opening Comments
December 6, 2002

Good morning.

It’s nice to be back after fifteen hours on an airplane that started back home 21 hours ago.

I want to thank you for your interest in this week’s economic development trip to China and Singapore.

The past six days have been very encouraging for our state.

This trip laid a firm foundation.

A foundation for more business for Washington state companies.

And more jobs for our state.

We met with top officials in both China and Singapore.

The meetings went very well.

We strengthened our relationships with these leaders.

We envision more trade partnerships and business collaborations because of these meetings.

Mutually beneficial trade relationships require face-to-face conversations.

Strong international trade is important to our future economic vitality.


Like education and workforce development, it is a high priority for our state and my administration.

We must continue to do what it takes to bring business and jobs here.

That’s the key to returning our state to economic health.

We need to do what we can to create more jobs for Washington citizens.

Meeting with our trade partners is an important investment in our future.

These relationships require face-to-face conversations.

And we had some very productive conversations this week.

In Beijing, for example, we met with the prime minister and key leaders of the Chinese regime promoting Boeing. We met with the head of the 2008 Olympics Organizing Committee.

This gave us the opportunity to promote participation by Washington companies in the planning, construction and management of those Olympic games.

In Singapore we lobbied for Washington biotechnology companies and research institutions.

Biotechnology is really growing in Singapore right now. And they want partnerships with U.S. companies and universities and Singapore’s government has to invest in the U.S. to fund research and development. This is very much desired by our Washington companies and universities.

And our companies are on the cutting edge of the industry.

We’d like to see research and development investment by Singapore, and more collaborative activity in these key Washington industries of the future.

This week we made good progress toward these objectives.

In both China and Singapore, we established new relationships.

And we will continue to build on the relationships we have already formed.

We are very optimistic that the progress we made in the past few days will lead to more jobs here in Washington.

And now I’ll take your questions.