Ming Huang, executive director of the U.S. Heartland China Association, the U.S. nonprofit that organized the trip, said the trip was a difficult time for international visitors and potential investors amid a four-year pandemic and border controls. His starving Chinese compatriots said they were “overjoyed” at the welcome from American mayors. At the end of last year, China went from six mayors to five cities.
“Wherever we go, whether it’s Hong Kong or Wuhan, we haven’t had a delegation like this for a long time,” she said. Fan added that more Chinese cities hope to host the event. “Cities were struggling to get on our itinerary and we literally couldn’t do it.”
Chinese provincial and city leaders have been pleading with U.S. leaders for decades to create investment and trade opportunities. These efforts, which were stalled due to the coronavirus pandemic, are once again accelerating with new enthusiasm.
Chinese officials are seizing opportunities to forge relationships with mayors and other local U.S. leaders, relationships that could give Beijing leverage over an increasingly hostile government in Washington.
Relations between the United States and China are at their lowest point since the two countries agreed to formally recognize each other more than 45 years ago, although recent efforts have been made to stabilize relations. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s quest for world domination means that Beijing is seen by Washington as more of a threat to national security and the economy than ever before.
With Mr. Xi’s encouragement, the next targets of China’s efforts to win friends and influence in the United States will be leaders outside the Belt and Road. But such friendships will be difficult to forge in a sensitive election year, with American leaders wary of appearing too close to China.
Evan Medeiros, director of Asian studies at Georgetown University, who served as the Obama administration’s top advisor for the Asia-Pacific region, said, “What the Chinese are doing is finding supporters and champions of the U.S.-China relationship and then managing them.” I’m trying to do that,” he says. “They want to activate the ballast sources in the relationship to stop the relationship from deteriorating.”
Prior to the pandemic, exchanges such as business delegations, gubernatorial visits, and cultural and academic exchanges were common between the two countries. After the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. states actively sought opportunities to benefit from Chinese investment and the rise of the Chinese economy. More than 100 “sister city” agreements were signed, and dozens of Chinese government-affiliated Confucius Institutes were based at American universities.
Relations deteriorated under the Trump administration, and everything came to a standstill due to the pandemic. Incidents such as China’s “spy balloons,” U.S. export restrictions restricting access to China’s advanced chips, and a spate of threats against Taiwan didn’t help.
Things started to change this fall, when China hosted a series of U.S. politicians, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and a delegation of senators. In November, Mr. Xi visited the United States for the first time in six years, calling for building “more bridges and roads for people to interact” and having dinner with executives from Apple, Nike, Pfizer and Boeing. .
Chinese diplomats in the United States are fully committed to what Chinese and American diplomats call “local diplomacy,” an area of renewed focus for both governments.
“Our objective is very simple: to promote regional cooperation, such as business investment and people-to-people exchanges,” said Zhou Zheng, head of the subnational affairs division of the Chinese embassy in Washington.
Zhou said he was “cautiously optimistic” about resuming such exchanges, noting that China’s appetite for investment is much stronger than U.S. city and county governments’ more tense relationships with China at the national level. He said the interaction meant it was “pretty relaxed.”
Some states are aggressively targeting Chinese money, even in Republican strongholds where lawmakers are pushing laws to limit Chinese investment.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R), who last year called China’s ruling Communist Party an “existential threat” to the United States when he signed legislation restricting the use of Chinese technology on the state’s networks, recently announced that 19 Approved tax incentives for a $1 billion EV battery factory. 10% of its shares are owned by Chinese companies.
“I think we’re facing some kind of challenge where we’re afraid of opportunities and eliminating opportunities and shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said in Oxford, a town not far from the proposed EV factory. Mayor Robin Tannehill said. Heartland Mayor’s Tour.
More U.S. mayors, businessmen, university officials, artists and others are beginning to receive invitations to visit China. “A lot of people think, ‘Okay, we’ve got our marching orders,'” Huang said. Hwang’s organization has answered some of those calls.
But these efforts have been met with resistance in an election season in which China has become an issue and public distrust of China is at a historic high. In 2023, at least 81 bills were introduced in 33 states to restrict Chinese land purchases.
Former president and likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has discussed with his advisers the possibility of imposing a flat 60% tariff on all imports from China, saying, Efforts to end the sale are being pursued in litigation.” China. Meanwhile, President Trump’s rival, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, criticized the president for being soft on China, calling the country “the most dangerous threat America has faced since World War II.” called.
And in November, Florida Governor and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis criticized Haley for welcoming a Chinese fiberglass company to South Carolina while she was governor. He then wrote a “love letter to the Chinese ambassador telling him what a great friend they were.”
“That’s the difficulty we have now. When we approach some local governments, especially Republican governors, they just refuse to meet with us,” said Zhou from the Chinese embassy. “In the past, these [were] Things that we do normally, things that both countries do normally, are all being demonized these days. ”
Analysts say there is a real risk that terrestrial connectivity could be used to undermine national policy or disrupt democratic processes.
According to Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has long pursued a strategy of “exploiting the local community to encircle the centre,” and has cultivated local support for its policies in other countries as well. It is said that Chinese influence operations. And the main target is the United States.
“There is a hostile foreign country that is deliberately targeting our political elite and trying to start a political war,” she said, noting that lower-level U.S. officials could be placed in more influential positions. did. (As governor of Arkansas, future president Bill Clinton visited China four times.)
“This is an ongoing challenge, but [and] “We can expect to see more instances of foreign interference in the lead-up to the election,” she said.
Another complicating factor for China’s operations is Taiwan, a democratic island that the ruling Chinese Communist Party claims as part of its territory. Although Taiwan has cultivated local ties with the United States for decades, it has no formal diplomatic relations with the U.S. government, making it one of the few channels of engagement available.
In sister city agreements, China requires some US cities to agree to Beijing’s “one China” principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China. But in recent years, support for Taiwan has become a badge of honor for officials looking to take a tough stance on China. Nine U.S. governors have visited Taiwan since then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) angered the Chinese government by visiting Taipei in 2022.
“Many governors are considering going to Taiwan, but they have no intention of going.” [China]” said Jessica Bisset, who manages local efforts for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Kyle Jarosz, an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame who is working on a book on the subject, said there was a “huge setback” on the U.S. side. “China is reaching out, but finding partners is difficult.”
Still, China, with its huge economy, has found willing partners.
Kim Norton, mayor of Rochester, a town of about 120,000 people in southern Minnesota, visited China for the first time during her visit to the Heartland. She was impressed by the number of high-speed trains and electric buses. Her city is on a multi-year waiting list for electric buses, but Washington continues to restrict imports of Chinese-made EVs.
She recently expressed interest in Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Could we form a partnership with a country like China that might help us?” she said. “I wish there was a way to bridge that and build better partnerships.”
Kuo reported from Taipei.