Republic file photo Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop meets in Hangzhou City with Peng Bo, middle, vice director of the Xiangyang, China Provincial Foreign Affairs Office, during a trade mission to China. Xiangyang, China is Indiana’s sister city.
Columbus will maintain its sister-city relationship with Xiangyang, China despite state legislation passed last session that bans any future such agreements.
Columbus has been a sister city to Xiangyang, the second largest city in the province of Hubei, since September of 2011.
House Enrolled Act 1120, which generally deals with state and local administration, includes a provision that effectively bans the agreements, although the ban is not explicitly retroactive.
The language states that cities like Columbus cannot enter into any type of cooperative agreement with a “prohibited person,” which refers to local governments and educational institutions designated by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce as “foreign adversaries” including: China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.
Ferdon said city officials “were taken aback” when they saw the provision tucked into wider legislation.
“It’s a little vague,” Ferdon said. “I’m assuming it doesn’t mean that we can’t still continue to have an established relationship with other countries simply because Columbus has a lot of diversity, which we really value, and so it’s been really important for us to understand where they come from and make sure that we exchange information, knowledge (and) culture.”
Rep. Ryan Lauer, R-Columbus, and Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, both voted for the legislation to prohibit cities from sister city agreements with “foreign adversaries.”
The initial connection point between Columbus and Xiangyang was through a joint venture between Cummins Inc. and Xiangyang-based Dongfeng Motors. Columbus officials first visited then Xiangfan in 2007 and Xiangyang officials returned the favor in October of 2009. The last encounter between the two cities occurred when former Mayor Jim Lienhoop visited in 2018, Ferdon said.
“Unfortunately we just haven’t really done a whole lot with our sister cities in the past six years except for Miyoshi,” Ferdon said.
The idea behind Columbus’ sister city agreements, Ferdon said, is to promote connections between two places and exchange cultures.
“The purpose has really been to create relationships and foster cultural and food and educational exchanges and friendships because for a variety of reasons — that’s how we grow, right, and how we learn to understand people from other areas of the world,” she said.
There has been a push by those hawkish on China, including U.S. Rep. and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Banks, to crack down on the agreements. Banks is also a member of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
“The CCP pushes sister city agreements to get a foothold here, not to help Indiana,” Banks said in a press release celebrating the provision. “I’m glad that state lawmakers are focused on ridding Communist Party influence from our state, whether that means banning ag land purchases or cooperative agreements with out foremost adversary.”
Ferdon said she gets what is fueling provisions such as this.
“We understand that business rivalries and then the U.S. economic policies with China are more adversarial right now than they’ve been in the past, so we understand what’s driving this legislation. It’s not a question of pulling out from the agreement, like I said, we really haven’t done anything since 2018 and so it’s kind of in stasis,” Ferdon said. “The intent and the purpose was to create a much broader understanding between two different cultures and so I think that’s really important for us to continue to do that.”
“We obviously won’t establish any more agreements at this point in time and we’ll just kind of see what happens,” she said.
Carmel is also a sister city with Xiangyang and has been since 2012. Banks in February had called on Carmel and other Indiana cities to withdraw from sister city agreements with China and turn down future trips there after a Washington Post story detailed a visit that former Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard had taken to the city.
State Rep. Mitch Gore, D-Indianapolis, first introduced the provision within 24 hours of learning of Brainard’s trip and it was added to House Enrolled Act 1120 near the end of the session, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
Gore had said he intended for the provision to work retroactively as well, but that is not the provision has been interpreted.
“I think when it was drafted, the intent was for it to be retroactive, but if the language wasn’t clear enough, that’s a mistake,” Gore told the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
