A Western Australian city is considering severing its sister-city relationship with its Chinese counterpart amid concerns that Beijing is using the ties for foreign interference.
On July 12, Albany city councillor Thomas Brough sent a notice of motion, calling on Albany to terminate its sister city relationship with Linyi City, Shandong Province in China, which was signed in 2014, before the executive council meeting on Oct. 31.
“In terms of the relationship, I guess there are simple reasons for severing the ties,” Mr. Brough told The Epoch Times. “The relationship doesn’t fulfil any of the criteria that local government has for having a civic affiliation.”
The criteria for establishing new civic affiliations stipulate that preference will be given to “cities in countries where Australia has a free trade agreement or a proven trade record.”
Mr. Brough noted that since April 2020, when former Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an independent international inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has embarked on a series of retaliatory actions against Australia’s $20 billion worth of trade in a number of sectors.
“It’s supposed to be a relationship of friendship, and the CCP demonstrated that they are not our friends. With the trade warfare they conducted against Australia from 2020, and hurting local businesses within the city of Albany, that’s not what friends do, so that’s the simple reasons,” he said.
In addition, Chen Xianyun, the then mayor of Linyi who signed the sister city arrangement with Albany, has been purged from his role due to corruption.
However, the councillor said that his main concern around the issue “relates to threats to national sovereignty over Australia and United Front Work.”
Mr. Brough, who is also an emergency department GP and a former Australian army reservist, raised these concerns after attending a recent meeting between the Albany council and a delegation headed by Long Dingbin, the Chinese Consul-General of WA.
According to Mr. Brough, the delegation had shown special interest in Albany’s airport, which is wholly owned by Albany but in need of a $30 million upgrade of its tarmac, as well as the Chinese-owned Ferngrove Estate winery near Albany, the fish stocks in Albany’s waters, and the area’s minerals.
“It’s well documented that the CCP uses sister city relationships as a means of soft power projection. [It’s a united] front work through elite capture. This is the sort of their modus operandi,” Mr. Brough said.
“The relationship has bought nothing positive to the community of Albany, having a sort of direct access to the political leadership of a strategically important regional city. Knowing how the United Front works, this doesn’t seem in the best interests of the people of Albany or Western Australia.”
Acting WA Premier Questioned the Motion
The proposal to cancel the sister-city relationship was met with criticism though by WA Treasurer and Acting Premier Rita Saffioti, who called the motion “some sort of bad plot for a Netflix drama.”China is WA’s biggest trading partner due to its consumption of the state’s iron ore production.
Mr. Brough said he was “really disturbed and disappointed” by the Acting Premier’s attitude.
“The acting Premier, Rita Saffioti, is trying to deflect the matter and be dismissive of it when [we] really have issues of such importance that transcend the local government,” he said.
“I’m really disturbed and disappointed that the acting Premier is trying to play it off as a local issue when this is relevant to Albany, Western Australia, and the whole of Australia.”
Chin Jin, the global chair of the Federation for a Democratic China, said that the sister-city relationships are usually actively promoted by the Chinese side and passively accepted by other countries.
Global Action Urges Severing Sister City Relationship with CCP
Mr. Brough is not the first Australian councillor calling for an end to a sister city relationship with Beijing.In April 2020, Councillor Paul Funnell of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales’s largest inland city, called for an end to the city’s sister city relationship with Kunming City in China’s Yunnan Province.
“The provincial governing body of Kunming and Chinese national institutions are an extension of the totalitarian communist regime of China–nothing more, nothing less,” Mr. Funnell said at the time. “We must end that relationship arrangement and not condone such behaviour.”
“China’s notorious record of human rights violations and non-compliance with international treaties highlight its totalitarian nature. Yet many countries choose to turn a blind eye for economic benefits,” reads the statement by Hongkongers in Deutschland e.V., one of the organizations involved in the campaign.