Citizen diplomacy fosters 'family' connections

Municipal officials from China and US look to connect grassroots at summit

Citizen diplomacy is ever more important during the current trade war between China and the US, said the leadership at Sister City International (SCI) ahead of the upcoming US-China Mayors Summit to be held in mid-July in Houston.

The summit will be part of the 2019 SCI annual conference where municipal representatives from around the world will gather to foster understanding and connection at the grassroots level.

As China and the US established diplomatic relations 40 years ago, St. Louis and Nanjing became the first pair of sister cities for the two countries. That number has grown.

Today "we currently have over 200 city partnerships and more than 40 state partnerships with China", said Roger-Mark De Souza, president and CEO of SCI. "The relationship with China has become one of our strongest partnerships. In building those relationships we have seen many concrete examples of cooperation."

De Souza noted that the sister-city relationship between Columbus, Ohio, and Hefei resulted in more than $1 million in exchange programs in one year.

The relationship has become so involved that a biennial US-China Mayors Summit was set up in 2013.

"This is our fourth US-China Sister City Mayors Summit," said Carol Lopez, chair of the summit and vice-chair of the SCI board. "This year has special meaning because we are celebrating 40 years of diplomatic relations. What an amazing 40 years it has been in terms of what has happened in China and what has happened with our economies working together."

Tim Quigley, chair emeritus and president of the SCI Foundation, said that the summit mechanism shows that "both countries put great emphasis on subnational connections and in municipal and community connections."

According to Quigley, over 200 Chinese delegations representing more than 20 Chinese cities have already registered for the summit; another nine cities are considering sending delegations. On the US side, 21 cities have confirmed they will participate. "That's a notable increase over the past conferences," he said.

De Souza said that the primary goal of the summit is to not only celebrate the relationship, but also to point to the direction.

"We bring some of the questions to the summit: The Maritime Silk Road and what it means for us? How do we continue to energize and build the sister-city relationships between the US and China? What have we learned from the relationships? How do we leverage citizen diplomacy to really make a difference? We need to think how to strategically engage each other and move forward," De Souza said.

Lopez said efforts have been made to commemorate 40 years of the relationship. Working with Quigley and the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), they "came up with the idea of establishing a US-China endowment that could ensure in perpetuity we will continue to have these exchanges."

The US-China Endowment for Citizen Exchanges is the brainchild of Quigley and one of the principal features of the upcoming summit.

"The purpose of this endowment is to enable us to have the resources to provide to local US-China sister-city relationships in order to promote more exchanges in youth, sports, academia or municipalities," said Quigley.

Quigley stressed the importance of citizen diplomacy during the current climate.

"One of the most critical roles the citizen diplomacy has played for millenniums throughout the history of the world has been providing those connections between people, in particular when national governments are hitting some bumps in the road," he said.

Fan Bo, a representative for China at the SCI Foundation, said the fact that the more active participation of Chinese cities in the summit indicates that Chinese people understand the importance of staying engaged with the US.

"People have expressed interest in exchanges in more than 20 fields, and we are working hard to meet that demand," Fan said.

For De Souza, citizen diplomacy has a personal connection. His great-great-grandfather came from Guangdong. He grew up with a strong presence of Chinese traditional culture.