The Seattle Post-Intelligencer - January 10, 1997

By Imbert Matthee - P-I Pacific Rim Correspondent

SEATTLE For years, David Stone bought most of his outdoor equipment and apparel at Recreational Equipment Inc.

But last fall, the 47-year-old Seattle accountant stopped shopping there because the cooperative's racks were filling up with too many REI products made in China, a country he believes has an atrocious human rights record.

"It was a personal conscious thing," Stone said. "We (the United States) have passed most-favored-nation trading status for China for years. But if anything, China has become more resistant to discuss human rights."

Stone, however, didn't stop there. Late last month, he joined a small but growing group of member/consumers at the Seattle-based outdoor retail cooperative who want a boycott of Chinese imports at REI.

During the past several weeks, the group has circulated a petition committing those who sign it to stop buying REI goods labeled "Made in China" and calling for an immediate halt to the company's sale and manufacture of Chinese products.

The group's efforts, initiated with the help of the Tibetan Rights Campaign of Seattle, follow a similar campaign last summer among members of the Puget Consumer Cooperative. That move led to a boycott of all Chinese imports at the chain of seven health-food grocery outlets.

The boycott at the 40,000-member PCC removed about $100,000 worth of Chinese tea, spices, nuts and seeds from the shelves.

The stakes are much higher at REI, which imports about one-fifth of its apparel products from two factories in South China.

Last year, the decades-old retailer imported $10 million worth of Chinese-made goods for its nationwide chain of 46 stores and 1.4 million members.

Under REI's bylaws, a group of at least 15 members can petition the board to put the question to a vote by the entire membership, a procedure similar to the one activists used to reverse a PCC board decision that would have continued its Chinese purchases. But the REI board can still turn down such a ballot measure.

The human rights activists said they have not yet decided whether to seek a chainwide vote on a China boycott.

The campaign at REI comes at a time when bottom up pressure from shoppers is prompting a number of small businesses and organizations nationwide to reconsider their China buying strategies.

About 100 civic groups, churches, labor groups and retailers have pledged to boycott China, said Chimie Yudon Yuthok of the Tibetan Rights Campaign.

Add to that the consumer and union-driven U.S. pressure on Third World countries to improve their labor standards after last year's congressional hearings on child labor in Asia and Central America, and importers of Chinese-made consumer products have a new headache, said Eden Woon, head of the Washington State China Relations Council.

Woon said Northwest retailers, who have always made sure they do business with Chinese factories that meet ethical and labor standards, used to worry only about the annual renewal of most-favored-nation trading status for China.

"But now, there is a new pressure formed by a coalition of labor and human rights activists," he said. "This pressure, which brings in other political problems with China, is ill-advised."

REI's board of directors has defended its buying policies, saying that Chinese leaders wouldn't respond to a boycott and that severing manufacturing links with the mainland would only put the cooperative at a competitive disadvantage.

In addition, board members believe economic engagement is better for China's political development than isolation.

"As consumer reactions rise and fall, I would still maintain that being engaged is the best approach to dealing with China," said Wally Smith, REI's president and chief executive, who acknowledged China has human rights problems in Tibet.

But consumers like Stone, himself an exporter of accounting and consulting services to the Russian Far East, are beginning to question the strategy professed by large Northwest traders such as Boeing, Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser.

These companies argue that doing business will help countries like China eventually adopt western human rights standards. Already, the corporations say, China's economic growth has ensured more of its people have food and shelter, basic human rights.

But critics counter that in the more than 17 years since China opened its economy to the West, human rights such as freedom of speech and religion and the right to a fair trial still elude the Chinese.

In addition, Stone said, China recently has come down hard on Tibet's religious leaders and culture, and on dissidents who are calling for more democracy evidence that Beijing is in no mood to shore up its human rights record.

The issue is sensitive for REI members, many of whom climb, hike or travel in the Himalayas and feel an affinity with Tibet. Stone is a case in point. Four years ago when he made a trek in a remote part of Tibet, he saw the ruins of temples and monasteries destroyed by the Chinese.

REI's 12-member board late last year considered a request from the Tibetan Rights Campaign to withdraw from China, but decided it was in the best interest of the company and its members to continue acquiring its goods there, Smith said.

Pulling out would upset a carefully crafted 15-year-old relationship with the Chinese factories, whose products and labor practices are regularly inspected by Chinese-speaking REI employees, he said.

Some of the apparel items can be made elsewhere for less, as some REI members have suggested. But they wouldn't necessarily be of the high quality and timeliness REI shoppers deserve, Smith said.

So far, most REI members have voted with their purchases of Chinese goods. But if many co-op shoppers were to join the boycott, REI may have to reconsider its China import policy, Smith said.

"Ultimately, we take our signals from the market," he said.

Caption: David Stone has stopped buying from REI because it imports goods from China, whose human rights record remains under fire.