US Lawmakers Push DC to Sever ‘Sister City’ Relationship With Beijing

'China is uniquely marked by worsening human rights conditions, making this relationship particularly troubling,' said Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.)

Dorothy Li

Published: 7/19/2025, 10:51:01 AM EDT

US Lawmakers Push DC to Sever ‘Sister City’ Relationship With Beijing — Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the US and the CCP, speaks at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington on Sept. 25, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

A group of House Republicans has introduced a bill that would require the nation’s capital to withdraw a “sister city” agreement with China.

The District of Columbia currently has 15 sister city agreements with municipalities around the world, including Brussels, Paris, Seoul, and Beijing, according to a list on the government’s website.

Among them, “China is uniquely marked by worsening human rights conditions, making this relationship particularly troubling,” Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who spearheaded the legislative efforts, said in a statement on July 17.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a co-sponsor of the Washington Sister Cities Act, said that the CCP has “weaponized so-called ‘sister city’ partnerships to advance their malign disinformation campaign in Washington, providing China with a pathway to spy on our government and expand their disinformation campaign.”

Dubbed the District of Columbia Sister City Integrity Act, the proposed legislation would bar the D.C. government from entering a sister city partnership with any jurisdiction in “foreign adversary countries,” a category that currently includes China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran, according to the bill’s text.

The bill also requires the D.C. government to serve the existing sister city ties within 180 days, or risk losing federal funds for “liaison and outreach services to the diplomatic and international communities.”

The District of Columbia first established a sister city partnership with Beijing in 1984, driven by hopes that the CCP would change and offer the Chinese people a taste of freedom, Moolenaar and 13 other lawmakers said in a June 4 letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

“That optimism was crushed just five years later in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, where hundreds if not thousands of students and pro-reform activists were killed,” read the letter.

Lawmakers called on Bowser and her administration to reconsider their decision to maintain the partnership with the CCP, citing the regime’s “well-documented exploitation of sister city partnerships.”

They pointed to the fact that China’s sister city relationships are overseen by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries—an arm of the CCP’s United Front Department—and are subject to approval by the regime’s foreign ministry.

“As a result, these agreements serve to promote CCP and [China’s] state interests, undermining the sister city partnerships’ original intent of fostering genuine people-to-people ties,” they wrote.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Bowser’s office for comments.

The State Department, under the first Trump administration, also identified the “sister city” as one of the vehicles that the CCP’s United Front department used to penetrate state, local, and municipal governments in the United States.

Aside from influence operations, the CCP also utilizes local relationships to export its repression of dissident movements abroad. A 2017 internal document, previously reported by The Epoch Times, directed officials to “fully utilize” sister city channels to “effectively suppress Falun Gong’s space for activities outside the country.” Falun Gong is a meditative practice that has been brutally persecuted by the CCP for 26 years.

In 2024, the regime’s vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu said that there are 286 sister city agreements between China and the United States.

The ties with communist China have sparked concerns across the nation.

In Indiana, a law banning sister city partnerships with countries labeled as “foreign adversaries” was implemented last year. While it doesn’t mention China by name, most of the sister city agreements in the state were with Chinese authorities.

In Arkansas, a law signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and effective July 1 bans sister city relationships with communities in China.

From The Epoch Times