Chinese Cities Host American Mayors On Visits As Relationship Between Beijing and Washington Continues to Sour

A report by The Washington Post details how China is happy to host American mayors despite the continued decline in American-Chinese relations.

As relations between Beijing and Washington have become increasingly tense, China is looking to secure support amongst local politicians in America.

The article highlighted a visit to China by mayors from six American cities last November.

Visiting mayors in the bipartisan delegation were from cities such as Oxford, Mississippi, and Carmel, Indiana.

The organizer of the visit, the U.S. Heartland China Association, focuses on “building bridges and promoting opportunities between the peoples of the Heartland Region (20 states located between the Great Lakes to the Gulf) and the People’s Republic of China.”

According to Min Fan, executive director of the U.S. Heartland China Association, their Chinese hosts were “overjoyed” that the American mayors made the trip across the Pacific.

Local officials lead the Chinese efforts to increase economic partnership between the two countries in China.

In a post on their website, the U.S Heartland China Association said the recent visit by American mayors was part of a program called the “Yangtze-Mississippi Municipality Energy Transition Exchange Project.”

This program seeks “to promote city-to-city best practice sharing between the communities along these two major rivers around energy transition, climate mitigation, and green economy.”

The mayors toured cities such as Hong Kong and Wuhan and met with Chinese mayors and businessmen.

Despite the seemingly benevolent nature of the visit, some pundits find the exchanges sneakily damaging to America in the long term.

Anne-Marie Brady is a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, who focuses on “Chinese influence operations” in her research. According to Brady, China is trying to get in the good graces of many local officials in America, as some are guaranteed to rise to higher offices later.

Brady is not the only academic who believes this. Evan Medeiros, head of Asia studies at Georgetown University, agrees.

Medeiros claimed the Chinese are “trying to find supporters and advocates for the U.S.-China relationship and operationalize them.”

Chinese officials have pushed back on these claims, characterizing the relationships between them and their American counterparts as mutually beneficial.

Zhou Zheng, head of subnational affairs at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, claims that the mayoral exchanges are done to create subnational cooperation between the two countries.

Despite poor relations at the national level, he believes that some American politicians and businesses are open to cooperation with their Chinese counterparts.

Due to incidents like the Chinese spy balloon collecting intelligence across America last February and increasing tensions surrounding Taiwan, U.S.-China relations at the national level continue to worsen.

It remains to be seen whether increasing subnational relations with China is a trick to weaken America from within or something beneficial to both countries.