Sisterly love: Tacoma’s ties to Chinese city help counter COVID-19 distrust
Diplomacy between the United States and China is as precarious as a house of cards, but you’d never know it here in Tacoma.
Last week, Tacoma’s sister city of Fuzhou, China sent 70,000 disposable medical masks and 500 disposable medical gowns to help its Puget Sound counterpart contend with the ongoing coronavirus threat.
The personal protection equipment will be dispersed to homeless shelters, nursing homes, and health care providers. The city is also holding some of this PPE in reserve in case a second wave of the outbreak hits.
This gift from Fuzhou is a generous token from the city that gave us the beautiful Ting building in Chinese Reconciliation Park, but it’s worth noting the gift comes at a time when China’s propaganda machine is operating at full tilt.
Chinese leaders are engaging in a massive coronavirus diplomacy effort. They’re looking to score political points, expand global influence and, according to many observers, obfuscate their mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in Wuhan province late last year.
Instead of sharing what it knew with world health experts, China squandered precious time trying to control the message and its people while cracking down on whistleblowers.
The U.S. earns no prize for its early response to COVID, either. President Trump downplayed it and reacted too late. That, coupled with a dismantling of the U.S. pandemic response team, cost lives.
In February and March, as coronavirus spread across the world, Trump praised China multiple times for how it handled the epidemic, but on Friday, he stood in the White House Rose Garden, accusing China of malfeasance, theft and an unlawful power grab of Hong Kong.
Trust between the two countries has eroded to such a degree that Trump says he is severing ties with the World Health Organization. Like a match to gas, we expect this will only inflame conspiracy rumors involving unfounded claims that the virus was made in a Chinese lab.
Fear and distrust have increased since coronavirus arrived on our shores, making its inexorable march to the 100,000 death mark this past week. These emotions sometimes manifest in racism and hatred, like the kind explored in a TNT op-ed today submitted by two local professors.
All this means the ties that bind Tacoma and Fuzhou — one of 14 Tacoma international sister-city relationships — are more important than ever.
Certainly the global community needs to hold China accountable for how it handled the initial disease outbreak, as well as the human rights abuses long allowed to fester under its Communist regime. But this is no time to disengage from diplomatic efforts.
Tacoma and Fuzhou became sister cities in 1994. So strong are their bonds of friendship, China President Xi Jinping made a special stop at Lincoln High School while visiting the U.S. in 2015. Fuzhou later welcomed a visiting group of Lincoln students.
Bruce Sadler, a board member for Tacoma Sister Cities, put it succinctly when we contacted him Thursday: “Sister city relationships break through the political noise and help one another through tough times.”
Indeed, at the end of January, when it became clear that a mysterious pathogen was sweeping through Fuzhou, Tacoma raised funds and sent more than $1,200 worth of medical supplies within a week. It’s heartening to see Fuzhou now reciprocate.
Fuzhou is only a five-hour train ride from Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic. It’s a larger city than Tacoma — more than 16 times larger, population wise — but the two have a lot in common: Both sit in the shadow of a majestic mountain, support a shipping culture and are filled with citizens who don’t share their government’s animosity toward their trade partners.
“True friendship lasts forever” was written on the boxes of PPE sent to Tacoma.
A cynic might raise an eyebrow at China’s motives, but the words would have pleased President Dwight Eisenhower, who established the U.S. Sister Cities program in 1959.
Eisenhower, a Cold War president, knew grassroots diplomacy could thaw icy political relations and ultimately prevent war. The decorated general also knew business and trade opportunities are only made possible through such inroads.
Well, you can’t get more diplomatic than Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards. After receiving the medical supplies from Fuzhou, she issued this press statement:
“Our relationship with Fuzhou, the ancestral home of many Chinese-Americans who settled in the Pacific Northwest in the 19th century, has been deep and enduring, and I look forward to the day when I can again share my appreciation with them in person.”
To those who think the mayor is playing patsy to China’s propaganda machine, we say this: The intent of sister cities was never to parse politics; that should be left to heads of state.
It was meant to forge friendships, and for almost 30 years, Tacoma and Fuzhou have stayed true to that mission.