“While American local governments value such “exchanges” for financial and cultural reasons, ‘exchange’ (交流) has always been viewed as a practical political tool by Beijing, and all of China’s ‘exchange’ organizations have been assigned political missions”. — China’s Influence & American Interests, Report of the Working Group on Chinese Influence Activities in the United States, by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, 2019.
“We will keep connecting schools in the U.S. and China one at a time”. — USA-China Sister Schools Association.
China has used its sister cities to boost its “mask diplomacy”, in which it plays both the arsonist and the firefighter, and has written about this new initiative in state media with quotes from “grateful” US sister cities thanking China for sending them masks.
Local politicians and others, such as school principals, are simply easy targets for the sophisticated tactics of CCP officials, who prey on the goodwill and naiveté of unsuspecting Americans, although willful blindness doubtless plays a role. “Local politicians typically know little about China and have no responsibility for national security, and because their Chinese interlocutors present themselves as offering people-to-people exchanges and ‘opportunities for local business’, these politicians have a strong incentive to remain uninformed”. — Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World.
On November 17, four US Senators introduced legislation to investigate the “sister city” partnerships between communities in United States and China. According to Senator Marco Rubio:
“The Chinese government and Communist Party has a history of exploiting cultural and economic partnerships to conduct malign activities, and it’s clear that opaque, sister-city partnerships deserve increased scrutiny. We must do more to better understand, and then counter, Chinese influence operations at the state and local level, which are often conducted under the benign auspices of sister city relationships.”
In February, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also warned:
“Chinese Communist Party officials… are cultivating relationships with county school board members and local politicians – often through what are known as sister cities programs… Last year, a high school – a high school, a high school in Chicago – disinvited a Taiwanese representative to serve on a climate panel after Chinese pressure.”
