At the end of August, the City of Edinburgh Council released a report on Edinburgh’s relationship with Kaohsiung, announcing a “friendship arrangement” between the two cities. Edinburgh Council Leader Cammy Day said it was “Great to see our agreement approved today to work in partnership with Kaohsiung in culture, academia, festivals, and so much more.” Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) expressed “heartfelt thanks” for the “steadfast support of democratic and free cities.”
Behind the careful language, though, is an uneasy compromise that reflects a number of political and economic undercurrents.
The Battle
The initial idea of a relationship between Kaohsiung and Edinburgh began when Council Leader Day visited Taiwan last year. After Day returned to Scotland, he led a proposal to sign an official friendship agreement with the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung — in the form of a memorandum of understanding.
However, in response to that proposal, pressure was applied to the council. China’s representative in Edinburgh, Zhang Biao (張飆), sent an email to Edinburgh Council saying that a formal agreement would be seen as “deeply related” to the “Taiwan question” and that it would “bring about serious consequences.”
“The Chinese government firmly opposes countries that have diplomatic ties with China to conduct official exchanges with Taiwan in any form, including signing [an] agreement with sovereign implications or of an official nature,” Zhang said.
Further pressure came from local businesses and business groups, some of whom were contacted by Chinese diplomats, according to the Financial Times.
Edinburgh Airport, the University of Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, the Edinburgh Hotels Association and Essential Edinburgh, a business association, warned about the threat of sanctions from the Chinese government, and possible effects on trade, tourism and student numbers. In 2023, Chinese visitors accounted for 1 percent of total overseas visits to Scotland and 3 percent of total overseas spend in Scotland (£117 million or $154 million), according to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics. That same year, 20,830 Chinese students were enrolled in Scottish higher education institutions.
The Uneasy Outcome
The end result was a change in direction. Having acknowledged the idea that a formal arrangement presented “risks” in an initial report that proposed a five-year agreement with Kaohsiung in June, including an increased risk of cyber attacks, City of Edinburgh Council withdrew that report. On August 22, it was replaced by a second report that adjusted down the relationship to the informal “friendship arrangement.”
As of now, that informal arrangement remains a source of tension from both sides.
Conservative and Scottish National Party council members we spoke to expressed disapproval for the idea of getting involved in international politics, while Scottish Green Party Councillor Alex Staniforth told Domino Theory by email he was “dismayed” so many of Edinburgh’s institutions had “allowed themselves to be unduly influenced by the threats of a genocidal state and pressured the council not to engage in a full memorandum of understanding with Kaohsiung.”
For their part, the businesses and business groups were cautious in their responses. “Our member Hotels welcome visitors and collaborate with organisations from all around the world,” the Edinburgh Hotels Association said in an email. “We have no position on the new informal relationship, but Essential Edinburgh is pleased that Edinburgh Council did not progress with a formal agreement,” wrote Essential Edinburgh.
Tightening Space for Taiwan
What is clear from all of these positions is that Taiwan’s international operating space is being squeezed. Prior to 2020, when Shanghai cut off its sister city relationship with Prague after the Czech city twinned with Taipei, sister city relationships with Taiwanese cities received less scrutiny. In fact, Chinese cities regularly partnered with cities that were already twinned with Taiwanese cities, and vice versa.
Reflecting on that squeeze, Hung-bin Ding (丁弘彬), co-founder of Taiwan Sister Cities, a non-profit organization aiming support sister city relationships between cities in the U.S. and Taiwan, said he completely disagreed with the statements made by the Chinese representative in Scotland regarding the political nature of the original arrangement.
“Sister Cities and/or Friendly Cities are simply a structured community-to-community relationship between cities from different countries,” Ding said in an email. “Sister Cities International (SCI) has a clear explanation and informative FAQ for this definition. It has nothing to do with diplomatic ties between nations. A sister relationship with a city also does not exclude sister city partnership with another city from the same country. For example, Chicago is sister city to both Shanghai and Shenyan.”
“The statement by the Chinese representative is an excuse to dissuade the City of Edinburgh from a sister city partnership with a Taiwanese city,” Ding added.
For its part, the Scottish government — which was approached by both the City of Edinburgh Council and the Chinese consulate — appears to lean toward the same definition. It said the matter was for the local authority to decide on.
What can also be observed here is that Beijing’s responses to other kinds of formal agreement remain context dependent. In 2023, the British Office in Taipei signed a memorandum of understanding with Taiwan over health cooperation, with relatively little fanfare — as the Taipei Representative Office in the U.K.’s Edinburgh Office quietly noted at the end of its statement welcoming the new Kaohsiung relationship this week.
The Future
But what does the future hold for Edinburgh and Kaohsiung?
By email, Conservative Councillor Joanna Mowat criticized the manner in which the matter had been handled, but said the informal relationship “seems a sensible compromise position.”
Scottish Green Councillor Staniforth told Domino Theory he had “attempted to pass an amendment to keep [a formal arrangement] on the table for next year” but that “clearly other parties have been sufficiently cowed,” suggesting the prospects of any future formal deal are slim.
Staniforth concluded that he was pleased to continue a less formal relationship and hoped that “in time our mutual belief in democracy and human rights will bring us even closer together.”
So, Edinburgh and Kaohsiung are “in a relationship,” but “it’s complicated.” And informal.
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