Last week, China bagged a preeminent position on a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) panel, paving the way for it to essentially handpick the international body’s human rights investigators. Jiang Duan, a minister at the Chinese Mission in Geneva, was appointed to the UNHRC’s Consultative Group, where he will serve as the representative for the Asia-Pacific region until March 2021.
The Consultative Group, the panel on which China will represent the regional grouping, is a five-nation body that plays a crucial role in selecting human rights investigators who oversee abuses around the world. According to UN Watch, a non-governmental human rights organization, this includes global monitoring of “freedom of speech, health, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detention”.
Having this post will also permit Beijing to influence the selection of at least 17 UN human rights mandate-holders over the next year, known as special procedures, who investigate, monitor, and publicly report on domestic issues in various countries and on thematic global concerns, such as freedom of speech and religion.
The UN’s appointment of Duan drew immediate backlash from prominent commentators and American political figures. One of the most prominent voice was of the former US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, who weighed in on Twitter, stating, “China was appointed on Wed to a UN Human Rights Council panel where it will play a key role in picking the world body’s human rights investigators–including global monitors on freedom of speech, health, enforced disappearances, & arbitrary detention. You can’t make this up!”
Meanwhile, Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, echoed concerns shared by many with regards to China’s increasing clout and pointed to the fact that “allowing China's oppressive and inhumane regime to choose the world investigators on freedom of speech, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief”.
Although this is hardly the first time the UNHRC has come under fire for undermining human rights, this latest incident may mark the beginning of a decidedly new global era with increasing Chinese influence.
In that past, countries like Venezuela, Mauritania, and Sudan were awarded seats on the body despite continued acts of brutality and oppression against their people. These controversial appointments are compounded by the organisation’s past problematic appointments to the council, which include Cuba and Saudi Arabia. Such stunning hypocrisy, along with the constant bashing of Israel, while giving a free pass to others, prompted the United States to leave the council in 2018.
But, as the United States slowly withdraws from the multilateral system and focuses on its ‘America First’ policy, China appears to be filling the political vacuum. And despite China’s missteps, American abdication will gradually ensure that the previous international unity and criticisms of China’s domestic policies have greatly diminished.
Furthermore, Chinese presence on the panel also means that it will get to pick experts to investigate and monitor freedom of speech, disappearances, detentions, and, ironically, the right to health. Despite China facing backlash for lying about its number of coronavirus infections and deaths, a portion of its work on the UN body will now focus on health-related issues.
Unfortunately, the most concerning aspect of recent developments has been the erosion of the WHO’s credibility. Many now firmly believe that the world’s foremost health body downplayed the severity of the outbreak right up until it turned into a pandemic. Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ inconsistent disease control measures and reluctance to criticize China’s earlier attempts to cover up the outbreak has led to greater scrutiny of his appointment and China’s role in it.
Trump has also threatened to put a hold on American funding to the WHO and suggested that the actions of the WHO felt very “China-centric”. However, the WHO isn’t the only UN agency that has been influenced by China.
Eager to expand its influence on the world stage and shore up its vested interests, China has placed considerable resources behind an effort to present its leadership at the UN as a nimbler, more dynamic alternative to that of the United States. This has triggered the suspicion that it might take advantage to transform the organizations in ways that fit its interests.
China’s UNHRC appointment aligns with the country’s ascent to more leadership positions within the United Nations and deeper investment in the UN system. Currently, four of the 15 UN specialized agencies are headed by Chinese nationals, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDP), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). By comparison, France, the US, and the UK lead one specialized agency each, despite contributing three times the amount of money China does to the UN budget.
Interestingly, Chinese nationals only make up for 1.06% of the total UN system staff, which is heavily disproportionate to its contribution and economic clout. It is currently the second-largest monetary contributor to the UN and pays 12% of the UN’s regular budget, compared to 22% by the US. But, China's influence is not something cannot that can be explained by its growing monetary contribution alone. For instance, it gave WHO, a body allegedly under its influence, only $44 million in 2019 compared to more than $400 million by the US government.
Beijing has attempted to occupy and dramatically alter the roles of high and mid-level positions in the UN system. By seizing these bureaucratic levers, it aims to set the norms for the rest and make use of these organisations to dispense or deny favours.
For instance, the position of the under-secretary-general for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has been held by a Chinese career diplomat since 2007. This has enabled the Chinese government to reshape the UN’s development programs in accordance with domestic interests. According to the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), China has been furthering its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) under the guise of promoting Standard Development Goals (SDGs). And the fact that DESA endorsed the China-funded program, “Jointly Building Belt and Road towards SDGs”, linking the BRI with the achievements of SDGs, only lent credence to the argument that China is assimilating its geopolitical projects with UN programs.
Despite the authoritarian undertones of China’s engagements and interactions with other countries, China provides economic incentives in exchange for the leadership in the UN. Just before the 2019 election for the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), China slashed $78 million in debt owed by the Cameroonian government. Interestingly, the candidate nominated by Cameroon withdrew his bid, paving the way for China’s nomination, a Chinese national, to become the president.
China’s influence over the UN ranges from brazen to discreet. Despite the UN Charter requiring UN officials to be neutral, Chinese bureaucrats have not always acted independently. In a 2019 interview with China’s state media, former Chinese under-secretary-general admitted, “We have to defend the motherland’s interests strongly.”
Thus Chinese officials have contravened the efforts of international organizations to remain independent by using these organizations as a proxy for the Chinese government, whereby they are able to silence criticism against the Chinese government and keep key actors and critics out of any deliberations. For example, Dolkun Isa, the president of the World Uyghur Congress, and his participation in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was thwarted by the former and incumbent head of DESA, a Chinese national. Additionally, in 2018, China arrested the Interpol President, Meng Hongwei, charging him with abuse of power as he refused to toe the party line. And though Interpol is not a part of the UN system, the arrest proved how China’s government did not shy away from punishing heads of prominent international organisations if they failed to act in the nation’s interests.
Similarly, China has also used its authority to ensure that Taiwan does not get to attend important meetings even though the nation is often touted as the gateway to East Asia. The most well-known case is the repeated refusal of Taiwan’s attendance at the WHO and ICAO annual conferences. This promotion of one’s self-interests should be more concerning when it harms and disregards what best serves the collective interests. Today, we know that the WHO’s refusal to correspond and cooperate with Taiwan led to it ignoring Taiwan’s early warnings of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19, which could have bought the world much-needed time to prepare for a pandemic.
As China becomes more integrated into international organizations, particularly within UN bodies and agencies, it is exponentially expanding the scope of its operations within these organizations. But, the admission of China to the UN in 1971 hinged around the belief that the country would come around and learn to play along with others and adhere to international norms. However, recent events suggest that rather than adhering to these norms, Beijing is, in fact, manipulating them to serve its own vested interests. Consequently, China has undermined the legitimacy of the UN, which now risks becoming a Chinese proxy.
For the UN, failing to uphold its core values of impartiality, justice, and universalism would defeat its purpose of settling distributional conflicts and erode any faith the rest of the world has in an organisation that is already undergoing a profound transformation. Similarly, this will also embolden other nations and leaders to flout international laws and norms that they would normally not think of ignoring.
As Meng Hongwei puts it, “If Beijing succeeds in retooling the UN to its purposes, China won’t become more like the rest of the world–the rest of the world will become more like China.”
Image Source: The Economist