Exclusive: Sen. Marsha Blackburn to Press for Transparency on U.S.-China ‘Sister Cities’

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) will press for more congressional oversight of U.S-China “sister cities” to make sure China is not exploiting local American politicians in new legislation she will introduce Wednesday, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.

Blackburn’s Sister City Transparency Act would direct the Government Accountability Office to look at sister city partnerships between the U.S. and China to make sure China does not take advantage of those partnerships to conduct espionage on U.S. soil and coerce local American politicians economically.

Blackburn said in an interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday:

What we know is that China has a plan for being globally dominant by the time we get to the midpoint of the century. They want the 21st century to be the ‘China Century.’ Now. You see them working on this through great power competition. You see them with their Belt and Road Initiative, their debt diplomacy, and a big part of their propaganda by their own admission is soft propaganda.

They have used Confucius classrooms and Confucius Institutes to push them. Plus, they have used the Sister Cities program. One of the reasons they use the Sister Cities Program is because that is where they can begin to build relationships with people at the local level, and target people that they feel are going to move up through the ranks if you will, and run for other offices at other points in their career. And so soft propaganda is a big part of their goal in causing people to favor the Chinese Communist Party and to not fear their aggressiveness on the global stage.

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The U.S. has 1,800 sister-city partnerships with countries all over the world, including 157 sister-city partnerships with China, for cultural exchange and economic development.

However, Blackburn warned, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could use these partnerships to undermine American interests right on U.S. soil, by economically coercing local politicians to act in China’s interests — not America’s.

“We need to look at the extent to which these communities are trying to use the sister city partnerships, to build relationships and maybe to conduct some malign activities and expand their reach into industry,” she said.

Chinese influence is a growing concern on American soil, as Chinese landowners continue to purchase American farmland, including near U.S. military bases, and Chinese companies seek to establish branches inside the U.S. that compete with American businesses.

According to Blackburn, there is currently little oversight on sister city relationships with the U.S., which leaves them vulnerable to malign activity and political and economic coercion.

As an example of China using sister city partnerships to pursue larger geostrategic aims, Blackburn pointed to China attempting to use Prague’s sister city partnership with Shanghai to force Prague to recognize China’s position that Taiwan not a separate country. That partnership ended in 2020 after Prague refused to do so.

“What we do not want for American values, and American policies, to be subservient to China,” she said.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) is introducing a companion bill in the House, she said.

Asked whether Democrats will support her initiative, she responded, “I hope so.”

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