Executive Summary

These activities transcend China’s traditional defensive posture in international organizations, in which it was careful to avoid confrontation with the United States and instead directed its diplomatic resources toward boxing in Taiwan and preventing criticism of China. Today, rather than focusing on narrow and self-defined “core interests” such as isolating Taiwan or forestalling criticism of Chinese policies in Xinjiang or Tibet, Beijing now also seeks to grow its clout by extending its concepts of human rights and sovereignty to other illiberal states. In short, China, through its behavior in international organizations, is making the world safe for autocracy.

This report examines China’s approach to seven organs and functions of the United Nations (U.N.): the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the Human Rights Council, Peacekeeping Operations, Accreditation for Non-Governmental Organizations, the International Telecommunication Union, UNESCO, and the Office of Drugs and Crime. This examination yields the following insights into Beijing’s emerging strategy in the context of international organizations, which seeks to advance China’s interests and values through:

China is increasingly using its economic, political, and institutional power to change the global governance system from within. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under President Xi Jinping has become more proactive in injecting its ideological concepts into international statements of consensus and harnessing the programmatic dimensions of global governance to advance its own foreign policy strategies, such as “One Belt, One Road.” These efforts demand the attention of the United States, its allies and partners, and civil society. If unchecked, they will hasten the export of some of the most harmful aspects of China’s political system, including corruption, mass surveillance, and the repression of individual and collective rights.

As the United States moves to compete with China across the diplomatic, economic, and military domains, it cannot overlook international organizations, which are a key battleground for determining which set of values will shape the 21st century. Washington must take Beijing’s approach seriously—and reengage, starting with the U.N. system. Key actions for the United States include:

Introduction

The rise of China and the United States’ partial retreat from multilateralism has provoked widespread anxiety over the future of the “liberal international order.” Although imbued with a new urgency in the United States today, these questions reflect the continuation of a decades-long debate about how a more powerful China would interact with the international system. Would it seek to sweep aside existing institutions in a decisive, possibly violent bid for undisputed hegemony or endeavor to be integrated into them, adopting their built-in complex of liberal norms and practices?

There is a growing consensus that the latter prediction has proven incorrect, and more generally that this debate has presented a false dichotomy. Instead, with respect to global governance, China is pursuing a hybrid strategy in which it both unilaterally offers its own institutions (and corresponding norms) and introduces them to legacy international organizations to reshape preexisting norms and activities to conform more closely to its own interests.8 Worryingly, as China grows more ideological and authoritarian, these alterations not only cause institutions to deviate from their ostensible missions, but they also undermine universal values and U.S. interests. This is particularly true in the arenas of human rights, sustainable development, and related fields.

This report largely focuses on China’s activities within the United Nations and its specialized agencies. The reasons for this focused scope are twofold: First, as the umbrella framework for global governance, the U.N. system is often the highest-profile stage for international cooperation in any given field; second and relatedly, the volume of information on China’s activities in U.N. organizations is greater than for those at other levels. Nevertheless, China’s strategy relies crucially on its activities in regional and multilateral contexts, and many of the ideas expressed herein are applicable to institutions outside of the United Nations. This study excludes the World Trade Organization, the Bretton Woods institutions, and extensive examination of the Security Council, as many scholars have analyzed China’s behavior in these contexts. This report is far from exhaustive. It aims instead to shed light on important but oft-neglected arenas of policy contention, lest international cooperation be turned to purposes antithetical to U.S. values and core interests.

The report proceeds in the following manner: After elaborating on China’s strategy in international organizations and the opportunities and constraints it faces, it examines a number of case studies that offer insight into how China is beginning to remake several U.N. bodies in its authoritarian image. The case studies encompass bodies as diverse as the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the Human Rights Council, and the International Telecommunication Union, to name a few. Finally, it concludes with a set of recommendations for how the United States, together with like-minded allies and partners, can best push back where appropriate on China’s efforts to impose its core national interests on the broader mandates of international organizations. At the end of the day, China’s incremental erosion of the global governance structure, particularly around human rights, will only be fully successful absent clear, compelling, and consistent leadership from the United States.

