He signed a friendship agreement with Shanghai that takes China’s side on Taiwan, NR has learned.
He signed a friendship agreement with Shanghai that takes China’s side on Taiwan, NR has learned.
A swirl of federal law-enforcement activity related to China’s extensive political influence in New York has not deterred Mayor Eric Adams from pursuing closer ties with China this year.
He and his commissioner for international affairs, Edward Mermelstein, have strengthened diplomatic initiatives with China, some of which appear to involve the country’s consulate general in Manhattan — which allegedly directed the activities of Linda Sun, a former aide to Governor Kathy Hochul whom the FBI arrested this week on foreign-agent charges.
The Sun case fueled concerns that Beijing has corrupted government institutions in New York. It follows charges brought in April 2023 against two individuals who allegedly operated an illegal Chinese police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, which brought both cases, meanwhile, is reportedly investigating Winnie Greco, a senior Adams aide linked to Chinese officials and one of the defendants in the Chinese police-station case. The reason for the probe, which included a raid of two houses Greco owns in the Bronx in February, is not known, and Greco has not been accused of wrongdoing.
After the Chinese-police revelations, the mayor’s team asserted that he takes the CCP’s threats seriously, but City Hall’s recent activities suggest that Adams is preoccupied with cementing New York’s friendship ties with China.
In May, he welcomed Gong Zheng, who is Shanghai’s deputy Communist Party secretary and mayor, to City Hall. “Mayors are on the frontlines of every major issue in our country and our planet,” Adams wrote on X later, adding that he was honored to host Gong.
During the meeting, they signed a memorandum of understanding “to promote friendly relations between the two cities,” a development that City Hall did not specifically publicize, though it posted pictures of the signing. National Review obtained English and Chinese copies of the memorandum using the Freedom of Information Law after seeing a reference to it in a Chinese-government summary of the meeting. The one-page document recommitted to an agreement that former mayor Michael Bloomberg signed in 2007 and contains paeans to goodwill and cooperation between the two cities.
But the document also contains language on Taiwan that supports Beijing’s effort to annex the island country. It states that the two cities will establish closer ties, “in accordance with the principles of the Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.”
“It is likely that this language really does serve to allow China to claim that NYC endorses its One China Principle that Taiwan is part of China,” Julian Ku, a law professor at Hofstra University, told National Review after reviewing the memorandum. Both countries signed the 1979 joint communiqué, in which Washington said it acknowledged Beijing’s claims to the island country, without endorsing them. When U.S. officials describe America’s one-China policy, therefore, they always make sure to additionally mention America’s separate legal and diplomatic commitments to help Taiwan resist Chinese aggression, Ku explained. But the NYC-Shanghai memo does not refer to those additional elements.
“Overall, I would not say this is a big deal,” said Ku, who specializes in foreign law and international law. But he added that the agreement “will be a vector for more PRC influence into NYC and a part of its larger influence campaign inside the U.S.”
Chinese party-state agencies have played up the importance of “subnational exchanges” between the two countries as Washington has taken a tougher line against Beijing. That effort spurred a federal counterintelligence warning in 2022 that China is circumventing D.C. to find allies in state and local government who can help press its agenda, including through “sister city” agreements overseen by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), a CCP political-influence organ flagged in the counterintelligence document.
Some of those efforts focus on isolating Taiwan. In 2023, Huang Ping, the Chinese diplomat who until recently served as consul general, urged Adams and Mermelstein to not attend a banquet for Tsai Ing-wen, who was then Taiwan’s president and in New York on a trip, National Review reported. Neither official attended the banquet.
In June, Mermelstein attended a reception for the 44th anniversary of New York City’s sister-city relationship with Beijing at the Chinese consulate general. “These relationships between New York City and Beijing are a powerful example of how international cooperation can lead to shared success,” he said in remarks there that were quoted in the People’s Daily, a CCP propaganda outlet. He posted the article to his personal LinkedIn page. Huang also spoke, situating the event in the broader sister-city campaign.
At another reception at China’s consulate general in February, Mermelstein hailed “productive dialogues” with Guangdong Province, according to the CCP’s China Daily, also a propaganda outlet. “New York City–China relations have always been good and will only get better,” Mermelstein said. It’s not clear if CPAFFC was an intermediary for those discussions, and City Hall did not respond to NR’s request for comment. But in January of this year, CPAFFC president Yang Wanming unveiled his organization’s plan to connect Guangdong with San Francisco and New York City.
“Even after the bombshell report of the Communist Chinese spy employed by Kathy Hochul and despite warnings from the intelligence community, NYC mayor Eric Adams is continuing the NYC and Beijing ‘sister city’ agreement, which is a formal partnership with Communist China and a national-security threat,” Representative Elise Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair, told NR in a statement.
“From CCP police stations in New York to employing a Communist Chinese spy, Eric Adams, Kathy Hochul, and New York Democrats have chosen to prioritize the interests of our greatest strategic adversary over those of New Yorkers,” Stefanik said. She also called for an immediate investigation into Adams and Hochul.