Fighting China’s ploys to control the UN

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

A sobering look at what China is up to globally. Good win to get the Singapore candidate appointed instead of China.

Fighting China’s ploys to control the UN

By: Kelly Craft, United States Ambassador to the United Nations

As the United Nations attempts to tackle many of the world’s greatest challenges, the biggest threat to its integrity and effectiveness comes from within — from China. For years, Beijing’s delegation in Turtle Bay has tried to twist the institution to suit its Communist government’s own ends. The Trump administration is pushing back.

It’s a mammoth task, in part because we’re the first to recognize the problem. But that’s the first step toward solving it.

As America’s UN envoy, I’ve seen firsthand the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly aggressive efforts to manipulate UN agencies to whitewash its bad behavior, silence criticism and advance authoritarian government.

China has used its permanent seat on the Security Council to protect authoritarian regimes in Syria, Venezuela and Iran. Beijing’s diplomats have pressured debtor countries and fellow authoritarian regimes to manufacture statements in the corrupted Human Rights Council and politicized UN General Assembly Third Committee praising China’s repressive actions in Hong Kong and Xin­jiang. CCP functionaries have also pressured non-Chinese leaders of organizations — most notably, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization — to advance the interests of Beijing.

Chinese nationals routinely violate UN requirements that individuals working for the institution act as international civil servants, rather than in the interests of their own countries. For example, Fang Liu, the head of the International Civil Aviation Organization, used her position to cover up a Chinese-backed hack of the organization’s computers and thwart Taiwan from participating on civil-aviation issues. The secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union, Houlin Zhao, has used his post to promote sales of Huawei, an arm of the Communist surveillance state.

Unlike our predecessors, the Trump administration is clear-eyed about this threat. We are exposing Beijing’s true intentions to the world and fighting back across the board. Within the UN system, we have worked hard to convince our allies to join us, and we are starting to see results.

Last March, we worked with our allies to ensure that a candidate from Singapore, a country that respects intellectual-property rights, defeated the Chinese nominee to lead the World Intellectual Property Organization. In May, we spotlighted Beijing’s brutal bullying of Hong Kong at the Security Council.

In June, we led the effort with our allies to secure the removal of so-called “Xi Jinping Thought” language from the UN75 Political Declaration. In a sign of UN member states’ growing opposition to CCP ideological references in UN documents, we went from being the only dissenting voice on two annual General Assembly resolutions last year to being joined by 30 allies this year.

On Sept. 16, I met one-on-one with the director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, the first such meeting between a top Taiwanese official and the US ambassador to the United Nations. During High-Level Week, we hosted an event with the top 10 humanitarian donors, a group that does not include China, that showcased the generosity of the American people and rebutted China’s claims of multilateral leadership.

The United States also continues to lead the charge in exposing appalling rights abuses against Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minority groups in Xinjiang and to demand action. Building upon several US-led events and statements on the issue, this month we supported our German and British colleagues in securing 39 cosponsors of a joint statement on Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet at the Third Committee — 16 more cosponsors than last year.

These aren’t the actions of an administration retreating from multilateralism. Rather, the administration is doing the hard work necessary to fix and preserve a multilateral system built on human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law. It might require cutting ties with certain international organizations that are beyond repair and significantly reshaping those that have temporarily lost their way. We want multilateralism — but multilateralism is useless if it facilitates authoritarian dominance.

This isn’t a battle between the United States and China but between a multilateral system that serves the people and a multilateral system that protects dictators. Not only for the freedom-loving nations of the world, but for the sake of those suffering today under authoritarian and abusive regimes, President Trump, Secretary Mike Pompeo and I will continue to fight every day on the side of freedom.

Kelly Craft is the US ambassador to the United Nations.

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Dan Warnick