Marsha Blackburn to Newsmax TV: China Pushing 'Soft Propaganda' in Sister Cities Programs

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., claimed during an interview with Newsmax TV on Wednesday that China is attempting to peddle “soft propaganda” through sister city programs.

Blackburn told “American Agenda” that “These sister city programs that China has entered into, they're soft propaganda is what we're finding out. And just like with the Confucius Institutes that are on our college campuses, or Confucius classrooms in our K-12 schools, what the Chinese Communist Party is done is to use these well-intentioned sister city programs to jump in here and began to spread their propaganda.”

She added, “Now, the city of Prague decided that they would disassociate with Shanghai because in order to continue their sister city program they were going to have to adhere to the one China policy, and you have Sweden that has banned China from having sister city programs. And so, we are trying to get the [Government Accountability Office] to do a closer look at these programs and to put some controls in place, figure out exactly what is going on with our U.S. cities that have entered into these” programs.

Blackburn said that China uses these programs to try to steal American technology, saying that “much of this has happened through the Confucius Institutes, which are on college campuses, because the professors that they send over are Communist Party members, and many times they are actually spies. And then we have had some cases recently we are you have the accusations and the convictions of some of these spies who have stolen technology.”

She added, “They are using this to infiltrate now. Also, look at what happened in California, you had a sister city and you had an issue where you had a Chinese spy involved in a community there. They try to pick out who they think are the up incoming leaders, they picked out [California Democratic Rep.] Eric Swalwell and then supported him going to Congress. And now he is on the House Intel Committee, so this is not something that is all warm and fuzzy. The Chinese are using it intentionally to infiltrate, find these opportunities and vulnerabilities where they think they can get useful information or intellectual property or rewrite China history so that it suits their narrative and not the actual history.”

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