Philadelphia Flies Flag of ‘Foreign Adversary’

Philadelphia flew the Chinese flag above its City Hall on Tuesday in a ceremony that reports suggest was meant to celebrate the 76th anniversary of China.

The city hoisted the country’s flag high for the third time in its history in a move widely criticized as showing support for the “totalitarian” Chinese Communist Party. 

Critics include Rep. John Moolenaar, R. Mich., the head of the House Select Committee on the CCP, who sent an open letter last week urging the city’s mayor to cancel the flag-raising ceremony.

“The Five-Star Red Flag, embodying the totalitarian government led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), represents a regime that is persecuting spiritual people of all faiths, including the genocide of Uyghur Muslims,” Moolenaar wrote. 

“It is a Communist Party-State that is diametrically opposed to American values and working to undermine our interests worldwide. The city government of Philadelphia should cancel the raising of the national flag of a foreign adversary country.”

Newsweek quotes Rushan Abbas, executive director for Campaign for Uyghurs, as saying, “Philadelphia, the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution, should not be used as a platform for authoritarian propaganda.”

Victoria Coates, vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, also criticized the flag-raising, writing in an op-ed, “All city residents should reject the leadership of Philadelphia’s campaign to betray our founding principles to virtue signal tolerance and diversity—a demonstration of weakness that China is only too happy to exploit.”

This isn’t the first time the city has raised the Chinese flag. It also flew the flag in 2017 and 2019.

The City of Brotherly Love describes itself as having a “sister-city” relationship with the Chinese city of Tianjin—a relationship whose 45th anniversary the cities celebrated in May 2024. That celebration included the visit of a delegation from Tianjin, which was welcomed by Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker.

That same month, China conducted live-fire drills around the island of Taiwan in an exercise a People’s Liberation Army colonel called “a strong punishment for the separatist acts of Taiwan independence forces.”

In his letter, Moolenaar called the sister-city relationship “disconcerting given how the CCP exploits these relationships to promote its own interests.”

Philadelphia isn’t the only city with ties to the CCP. Washington, D.C., also has a sister city relationship with Beijing, the Chinese capital.

The communists also appear to be planting their flag in neighboring New York City, which is poised to elect as mayor democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, a candidate described as “communist” by many, including President Donald Trump. Two of the top donors to Mamdani’s campaign worked for a tech company with alleged ties to the CCP, the New York Post reported earlier this month.