China’s manipulation of United Nations (U.N.) institutions, platforms, and practices for its foreign policy objectives in recent years has increasingly come into the spotlight. Experts have also been concerned that until the United States redraws its policy goals at the U.N. and asserts its leadership, China will increasingly violate, modify, and control it in its pursuit of global hegemony.
“It’s very interesting that China seems to have gamed the system in its favor,” Harsh Pant, head of the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation, told The Epoch Times. “And the way it has projected itself, that despite being the biggest disrupter to the multilateral order, it has emerged, for the large part of the world that looks, like it’s a supporter of multilateralism.”
Since the end of the Second World War, the U.N. has been at the center of global multilateralism with its rules, principles, and institutions. And while the geopolitical order has constantly transformed, global multilateral institutions, including the U.N., have become the focal points as nations maneuver for power.
Atlantic Council experts Michael Schuman and David O. Shullman are of the opinion that the United States and its allies pursued a 40-year strategy based on the assumption that cooperation and engagement would encourage the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to become a responsible stakeholder in a rules-based international system.
“On the contrary, Beijing has grown more assertive in its efforts to subvert those rules and norms that it feels constrict and constrain China’s global ambitions,” the experts said in a report last year.
They said that Beijing has also been able to organize for itself support from other illiberal governments at the United Nations to forward its ideological-based interests and global policies, like the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and its ideas on human rights and state sovereignty to contest core principles of political freedoms on the world stage.
Brandon J. Weichert, a U.S.-based geopolitical analyst and author of the book “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower,” told The Epoch Times that the Chinese are encircling the United States in a reverse containment strategy from the Cold War.
“China is playing the part of the Americans, and the United States, sadly, seems to be playing the role of the Soviet Union. The Chinese silent takeover of internationalist organizations is just one more way that Beijing executes its encirclement and containment policy of the United States successfully,” Weichert said.
“Plus, so many members of the United Nations are anti-American … it’s really a wonder that Washington hasn’t totally lost the U.N. by now.”
Weichert suggested that the United States should foremost focus on empowering the American people and protecting them from what he termed “the malign Chinese influence at home,” while building direct ties with nations abroad who share interests and values with the United States. He thinks the U.S. administration shouldn’t waste money and time on the U.N.
He warned, “It is in the sterile halls of the U.N. and other internationalist bodies that the first battles in this non-kinetic war between the [United States] and China for the future of the world will be waged.”
US Must Take Lead
Since the United States continues to be the largest donor to the United Nations, and because it and its allies are the primary targets for the CCP at global multilateral forums like the United Nations, experts believe that it becomes imperative that the United States take the lead in countering the growing CCP influence at the international body.
Building and strengthening alliances with shared values and goals is an important aspect of cultivating U.S. leadership on multilateral forums, according to Joe Chalil, a healthcare executive and the author of the book “Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Envisioning a Better World by Transforming the Future of Healthcare.”
“The United States can work with its allies and partners to present a united front against China’s efforts to subvert the principles of the United Nations. This can include diplomatic efforts, economic sanctions, and other forms of pressure,” he said.
Schuman and Shullman said like-minded allies and partners could effectively uphold liberal values against socialist China’s continued pressure.
Pant believes that the United States should work to counter the anti-U.S. narrative that China is increasingly projecting at the U.N. for exerting influence over the wider developing world.
“So perhaps showcasing what the [United States] actually does in concert to its like-minded partners on a range of issues from development to security, to capacity building; whereas China, [you can showcase] how it tramples on every single norm that has actually been there for the benefit of the developing world,” Pant said.
Weichert believes that the United States should refocus on reclaiming the loyalty and respect of the smaller nations of the U.N.
“Over the last 20 years, Beijing has fixated like a laser on providing incentives to woo small-to-medium-sized (usually non-aligned) states to their cause so that when an issue pops up in the U.N. or another international organization, that goodwill generated from increased support and bilateral ties with those smaller/medium states translates to an amenable outcome in these international organizations,” he said.
“Beijing refers to this as ‘small fish controlling a big pond.’”
Pant said it would be rightly done if the United States started to focus more on economic and developmental issues, which according to him, are a first-order priority for a large part of the developing world, including smaller nations.
“There’s a sense that the [United States] is not investing as much time and effort as it should, and I think that impression needs to change because the [United States] has been in this business for much longer than China. It continues to invest more than China, but I think the returns are becoming less,” Pant added.
Weichert described this as the best way to counter Beijing’s influence at the international organizational level.
“Right now, the [United States] is barely hanging on because it is being increasingly outnumbered by pro-Beijing smaller-/medium-sized states,” he said.
Pant said that while the United States should adequately communicate to the developing world and smaller nations, including nascent democracies, about how it’s working to address their needs, it, in some ways, also informs them about how China is challenging the security norms and the security architecture around the world, and how in the long run will impede the development priorities of the developing world.
“So I think ultimately it’s a battle of narratives, and the [United States] will have to do better in shaping that narrative,” he said.
Promoting Democracy and Human Rights
For strengthening and reinforcing its leadership at the U.N., the United States must continue to promote democracy and human rights on various multilateral forums, which could also mean identifying how China is working to antagonize it at the same forums, the experts said. They added this is because these activities translate beyond the multilateral forums and manifest into the national politics of developing nations.
“The United States can support and promote democracy and human rights worldwide, including in countries where China is trying to gain influence. This can include providing aid and support to civil society organizations, promoting free and fair elections, and advocating for the rule of law,” Chahil said.
Sulochana R. Mohan, the deputy editor of Sri Lankan national newspaper Ceylon Today, told The Epoch Times that Sri Lanka provides recent examples of how the CCP sabotages the U.N.’s influence in policing the world, “which is their mandate,” she said.
“It is well known that the U.N. struggles with two veto powers, China and Russia, who have obstructed any investigations into war crimes or alleged violations of human rights in the nations that have favored them,” she said.
China and Russia were among the U.N. Human Rights Council members who opposed formal Security Council involvement in investigating Sri Lanka’s alleged war crimes during the final stage of their war, according to Mohan.
Despite the U.N.’s assertion that there was tangible evidence of war crimes allegations in Sri Lanka, Beijing and Moscow continue to protect the Sri Lankan regimes involved in human rights violations to secure their reciprocation of the favor in global multilateral forums, she said.
“China stated that the UNHRC should not interfere in Sri Lanka’s domestic affairs and that human rights violations should be investigated using homegrown methods rather than international hybrid courts. Still, Sri Lanka cannot hold an international hybrid court, as requested by the affected Tamil community, but the U.N. has been unable to press the matter, demonstrating how the U.N. has become ‘weaker,’” lamented Mohan.
This is one of the reasons why Sri Lanka’s successive governments have stood by China and continued to strengthen their bilateral ties with Beijing while the Western powers continued to watch and worry, she said.
“Sri Lanka accepted [China’s] Belt and Road Initiative and offered a key location to construct a Chinese Port on a 100-year lease and went ahead giving many (sic) more land to them.”
She believes that the United States should work to gain trust among the grassroots communities in East Asia, South East Asia, and South Asia, where China has set up massive influence operations against the West by projecting itself as a developmental power indispensable for the region.
“China’s strength is that they make direct human-to-human contact with the locals faster than the West. Because of these distinct differences, China outperforms the rest,” she said, adding that in Sri Lanka, for example, when COVID-19 affected the fishermen community in the Northern Province, Chinese Envoy Qi Zhenhong and his embassy staff visited Jaffna.
Qi and his staff gave the fishermen dry rations and spoke to them through a translator and also visited the ancient Hindu temple of Nallur, which belongs to the local community.
“It is customary for devotees to enter the temple bare-chested and wearing only a vetti (lungi). The Chinese Ambassador and his staff followed suit. They participated in Hindu rituals bare-chested to appease the northern Tamils, who are opposed to the Chinese doing business in the north because they were preventing the UNHRC from holding an international investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity, primarily against the Tamils of the north and east,” Mohan said.
China makes every effort to reach out to the same affected community and it continues to do so. This is a classic example of how China deals with its BRI friends, the local editor said.
The United States should work out specific strategies at the grassroots where it faces opposition, win trust while respecting the local culture and traditions, and facilitate democracy and human rights, Mohan said.