A Sibling Relationship Gone Sour

HUAIBEI, China — Consider the disappointment of Huaibei, a gritty coal mining city in China’s impoverished Anhui province. City leaders here haven’t completely given up hope, but they feel spurned by their unlikely sister city, Springdale, Ark.

Six years ago, the governor of Arkansas, one Bill Clinton, nominated Springdale, pop. 39,000, to be sister city to Huaibei, pop. 1.8 million. “Springdale has many ties with China,” he wrote, “and is looking to expand its economic and cultural relationships.”

It was an imperfect match. Huaibei, whose main claim to fame is a new coal-fired 2-million-kilowatt power plant smack in the center of town, has almost 46 times as many people as tiny Springdale, a national poultry processing center in the extreme northwest corner of the state.

But there are ties with China. Tyson Foods Inc., headquartered in Springdale, last year exported 175 million tons of chicken feet to China, where they are considered a delicacy.

Anyway, Huaibei leaders were delighted. Huaibei’s satisfaction greatly increased when Clinton became president in 1992. City leaders, including top Communist Party officials, got busy trying to know Springdale better.

At the written invitation of Mayor Charles McKinney, Huaibei sent its first delegation to Arkansas in September 1993. A photograph in the Springdale Morning News shows McKinney and Huaibei Vice Mayor Liu Fugou signing a declaration urging “concrete cooperation between Huaibei City and Springdale.”

After they returned, the enthusiastic delegates sent a proposal to Springdale offering land and suggesting the Arkansas city use it to build a U.S.-style skyscraper marking the two cities’ friendship. Huaibei’s mayor invited McKinney and other Springdale politicians to visit China in the “blossoming warm spring” of 1994.

No word came back.

In 1995, the Chinese again dispatched a delegation to Arkansas, where they gave Springdale an exhibit of photos of Huaibei treasures--including the power plant and a stone sculpture, “Lion Biting Fish.”

Last year, yet another Huaibei official, deputy Communist Party secretary Wang Bangjie, trekked to Springdale and issued even more entreaties for someone from Springdale to visit. Same story. Silence.

In recent meetings with a foreign journalist, Huaibei officials poured out their frustration. “We’ve sent them six formal letters of invitation,” said Wang Yankun, vice director of the Huaibei foreign affairs office. “They haven’t responded to any. . . . Every year, we prepare for their visit. We even made a key to the city for them. We have tried our best, but still they do not come.”

McKinney, a former pharmacist who has served 19 years as Springdale’s top elected official, admitted in a telephone interview that maybe the sister city arrangement with the Chinese had been a mistake, saying, “I had no earthly idea what we were getting into.”

But he contended the main problem is “there is a big difference in how our government operates and how China’s government operates. We have to answer to the people and not to the government. They have to answer to the government and not to the people.”

He expressed doubt that his City Council, considering Springdale’s finances, would approve a China trip for officials. “I’d like to go to China,” he said. “The problem is that I just don’t have the money right now.”

Another problem, he said, is that some people in Springdale “are not too receptive to ‘Communistic’ things. We know they are changing over there. But they still got a long way to go.”