U.S. Diplomat Endorses China’s Sister-Cities Malign-Influence Campaign

Signaling a retreat from its own previous warnings, the State Department this month sent an American diplomat to a conference run by an organization that it had previously flagged as a vector for the Chinese Communist Party’s malign influence.

That gathering, the fifth China-U.S. Sister Cities Conference, came just ahead of this week’s expected meeting between President Joe Biden and General Secretary Xi Jinping in San Francisco, and it provided Beijing with a prime opportunity to stress propaganda narratives centered on the importance of “people-to-people diplomacy.” Xi sent a message lauding the conference, claiming that China has inked 284 sister-city agreements with American states and localities since 1979, the year of Sino-American normalization.

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Jimmy Quinn

Jimmy Quinn is the former national security correspondent for National Review.

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Signaling a retreat from its own previous warnings, the State Department this month sent an American diplomat to a conference run by an organization that it had previously flagged as a vector for the Chinese Communist Party’s malign influence.

That gathering, the fifth China-U.S. Sister Cities Conference, came just ahead of this week’s expected meeting between President Joe Biden and General Secretary Xi Jinping in San Francisco, and it provided Beijing with a prime opportunity to stress propaganda narratives centered on the importance of “people-to-people diplomacy.” Xi sent a message lauding the conference, claiming that China has inked 284 sister-city agreements with American states and localities since 1979, the year of Sino-American normalization.