It is called the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, but it has Beijing’s interests at heart.
On Tuesday in Beijing, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews met the association’s vice president, Li Xikui, a 59-year-old official from the Central Party School, who has made it his life’s work to get to know the lower levels of government that build communities – governors and premiers, councillors and MPs – not the prime ministers and presidents who represent them.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews with Li Xikui, the vice president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. Credit:Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries
The association’s name invites Western comparisons to a quasi-non-government organisation or a community group, but in reality, it is a product of China’s Soviet-style diplomacy, which aims to bypass interactions with official representatives from foreign governments to build networks at the sub-national level.
Li, who is a member of the Chinese government’s top advisory body – the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – has pushed for this kind of lobbying to be accelerated as China faces growing international pressure.
“Facing the new situation of major power diplomacy in the new era, it is necessary to shift the centre of gravity downward and do both high-level work and grassroots work,” Li told officials in 2020 according.
Australian and other Western governments, officials, businesses and non-government organisations pursue their own interests this way, too, but few are as centrally organised as China – which sees it as its citizen’s duty to advance its global economic interests and protect the power of the Party.
The connections developed by the association have advanced friendships between Chinese businesses, and state and local governments – making them all wealthier in return. But it has also pushed political parties to change local political positions on the South China Sea, ramped up pressure on Chinese students critical of Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong or activists who have protested against China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
All of it falls under the banner of China’s unofficial diplomacy – run through the association, the United Front network and the International Liaison Department.
“These interactions and their propaganda presentation make the friendship cluster a perhaps unwitting instrument of the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence operations,” said researcher Jichang Lulu in a paper on the influence of the networks on Europe published by Charles University in Prague.
“More generally, the work of the CCP’s influence machine with foreign officials, politicians and political parties is gradually achieving the transformation of democratic political systems into components of its global mechanisms of control.”
Li’s meeting with Andrews was by all accounts a cordial affair. They talked about Chinese medicine. Then a tapestry was presented. Li praised the “firm determination of the premier himself and Victoria to persist in developing relations with China”.
“The Premier and Vice President discussed current sister state arrangements and provinces where Victoria should focus future effort – particularly Shandong and Henan,” said Andrews’ two-paragraph summary of the hour-long meeting in Beijing. No Australian media were allowed to travel to China with Andrews or ask for more details when it ended.
For Li, the development of sister cities – often dismissed on Australian billboards as a quaint curiosity – has been a personal passion.
“Friendship cities is a very important platform and channel”, Li told officials in 2020. “As of the end of last year, we have signed 2708 foreign friendship cities. I think this is a huge platform and channel, but also people-to-people contact is a very important aspect.”
It can also have real-world consequences.
In 2016, Prague announced a sister-city partnership with Beijing.
“Beijing devoted one of its clauses to the [China’s] territorial ambitions over Taiwan,” said Lulu.
Officials in Prague thought it was an odd but worthy concession – it would help them secure a panda for the Prague zoo.
When the next Prague government asked if they could remove the clause relating to Taiwan in 2019, China boycotted all Prague-related entities including the Prague Philharmonic Choir.
“Prague’s sisterhood with Beijing was eventually terminated, followed by negotiations to upgrade its partnership with Taipei,” said Lulu.
It is a cautionary tale for Andrews, repeated among local governments that have come under pressure in the United States and Europe.
The Prague Panda was always going to have strings attached.
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