The committee's report recommends state lawmakers ban relationships between Texas and Chinese local governments but does not include an enforcement mechanism.
The committee wrote that the CCP has shifted from a strategy of peaceful co-existence to one desiring to become the global power leader, citing a recommendation from State Armor, an Austin-based security firm.
Chuck Devore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation said sister city arrangements are common.
"The challenge with Sister city arrangements with the People's Republic of China is that they come with strings attached and those strings are the Chinese Communist Party. Every single interaction that anyone's going to have with a sister city program connected with China, is going to be overseen by and influenced by, and often even directly managed by, the Chinese Communist Party."
DeVore said under Chinese law any corporation with 50-plus employees in China must have a CCP official as part of management.
Michael Lucci, of State Armor, told lawmakers the CCP is making preemptive moves should their relationship with the U.S. turn south.
“The CCP is pre-positioning assets in the U.S. to disrupt every normal function of civilian life if a conflict arose,” the report said.
The Chines strategy of disruption would be one of “everything everywhere all at once,” Lucci explained.
China may have appeared peaceful in its U.S. business relationships before, but things were not always as they seemed.
The Chinese government was quite active in various levels of U.S. education through its "Confucious Institutes," AFN reported in 2022.
"The Chinese have quietly built a foothold with local school boards, high school administrators, and county officials that's giving them a powerful voice they should never have. There are almost 60 Confucius Institutes on U.S. college and university campuses and 500 'Confucius Classrooms' in K-12 schools. It's a disturbing trend," Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said back then.
Not all that different
To discourage Texas cities from having sister city agreements in China, Devore said the state could withhold a city's portion of sales tax income.
"If this was 1938, would these same city officials be bullish about having a sister city relationship with, let's say, Frankfurt, Germany, or Berlin, Germany, under Adolf Hitler? I don't think any of them would. In fact, I think they'd be horrified at the prospect."
