China has worked to expand its influence within the United Nations and its agencies, amid its efforts to bring about power shifts in the international system. Its policies have focused on promoting non-interference in internal affairs and cultural relativism in the field of human rights. At the same time, it has used UN development agencies to promote Chinese technologies and practices, in addition to Beijing’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations as part of its influence in the field of international peace and security.
In this context, researcher Sebastian Haug and others published a study in the journal Global Policy in May 2024, titled “Power Shifts in International Organizations: China at the United Nations,” which raised the question: Is China working to overturn what is called the rules-based international system? The study indicates that China is seeking to mobilize more coercive power tools compared to two decades ago, with more influence within global institutional power, primarily the United Nations. However, it remains cautious and operates within the UN system in the same way as other powers, exercising its influence selectively.
China’s Rise:
The international system has witnessed changes in its structure and composition as a result of its transition from unipolarity to multipolarity, including China. After being viewed as a cautious global actor focused on developing its own economy, it is now seen as a globally influential power, having become the world’s second-largest economy and the second-largest defense budget; this has made it far surpass the “emerging power” category.
Given what the United Nations represents as an institutional framework that creates space for global influence in the governance of international policies, China aims to maximize the use of its diverse power to enhance its influence within that organization. In the past decade, Beijing has sought to reshape the United Nations, taking advantage of Western countries’ reduction of multilateral funding, which created an opportunity to expand China’s participation. Its contributions to the UN’s regular budget and peacekeeping budget have increased, making it the world’s second-largest contributor. Therefore, China’s influence space within the UN has expanded in the following ways:
- Peacekeeping: Beijing provided the UN with an 8,000-person peacekeeping standby force, making its participation larger than that of the five permanent members of the Security Council combined.
- Sustainable Development: China established a peace and development trust fund in cooperation with the UN and linked the Belt and Road Initiative and global development initiatives to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
- UN Positions: Many Chinese have held the position of executive director of the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs since 2007. In 2021, China held elected leadership positions in four specialized UN agencies, in addition to Beijing’s efforts to increase its representation in the UN Secretariat as one of its important long-term goals.
Patterns of Power:
To assess the extent of China’s influence within the United Nations, it is important to understand the areas of influence and patterns of power within that international organization to comprehend and understand the different impacts of “Beijing,” according to the following four patterns:
- Coercive Power, which is manifested in actors exercising direct influence to advance their interests. In the context of the United Nations, the influence of member states is linked to diplomatic actions with direct impacts and formal international decisions, which are one of the means for those states to exercise coercive power to shape the behavior of other members or the organization itself and/or mobilize them in its favor. The means used for direct control over others, such as member states or non-governmental actors, include economic, political, military, symbolic/normative, or expertise-related resources.
- Institutional Power, which relates to actors’ control over others in indirect ways, through rules, procedures, and practices that constitute important means of influencing others’ orientations beyond direct coercion. In the United Nations, institutional power is often reflected in unilateral funding practices, staff representation, networks, and other forms of linkages that enable representatives of member states or international civil servants or non-governmental agencies to exercise indirect influence over agenda-setting and implementation processes.
- Structural Power, which is formed through changes in the mutual composition of actors and their roles, and these changes are revealed through the interaction between actors that redefine existing roles or demand them or exploit them or shape new roles, and other actors that passively accept them or actively participate in shaping them. In other words, structural power shifts are formed through changes in the production of impacts in how actors are positioned in relationships and, consequently, how they interact. Unlike coercive power, structural power is not related to the exercise of coercive measures per se but is formed in the United Nations through the extent to which states have influence and interact with other powers. The five permanent members only have an officially superior status in the field of peace and security, which is fully accepted by UN members. At the same time, structural differences between donor and recipient countries shape the relationships of member states across multilateral bodies, including the United Nations.
- Cognitive and Discursive Practices: These relate to historically changing understandings, meanings, norms, customs, and social identities; they then work indirectly and tend to spread, and they can often work better when they conceal their operation and do not appear as an exercise of power. Cognitive and discursive power influences background knowledge, which occurs through changes in the shaping of actors through discursive practices to bring about changes in how multilateral problems are constructed and redefined; that is, changes in the production of impacts in knowledge systems related to “peace and security,” “human rights,” and “development.”
Influence Tactics:
Within the framework of the aforementioned four areas of power, the Chinese role within the United Nations can be read as follows:
- China and the Coercive Power Tactic: China initially relied on funding in the United Nations as a fundamental means of exercising direct control in the organization. In this context, Beijing promptly paid its full financial contributions, in contrast to the United States. On the other hand, beyond the regular budget, China allocates most of its voluntary funding through trust funds established in cooperation with UN entities, which gain effectiveness in exercising direct control despite being a secondary tool.
In addition, China enhances its influence in the development sector within the United Nations through UN councils and negotiation meetings to secure votes across the UN system, including in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Heritage Committee. In the field of human rights, China has increased its exercise of coercive power over the past decade, as it has directed targeted contributions to the special procedures of the Human Rights Council on issues that align with its interests, such as the right to development. In this context, China succeeded in mobilizing sufficient support to ensure that resolutions conflicting with its interests are not presented to the Human Rights Council.
On the other hand, China’s exercise of coercive power has clearly developed over the past two decades in the field of peace and security. Although China was the most hesitant member of the group of five permanent members of the Security Council to use the veto before 2011, it has used it 13 times since then, reinforcing the expected strength of the Chinese veto as a means of exercising control before any resolution is brought to the table.
China’s rising economic and political power over the past two decades has enabled it to mobilize coercive power in different and often complementary ways, as Beijing’s clear economic and political dominance has enhanced tools such as promising or threatening to cancel development funding, market access, and debt relief to compel and coerce other member states (especially those in the South) to act in line with Chinese interests.
- Maximizing Institutional Power: Beijing has specifically focused on increasing the number of Chinese in UN positions as a strategy to increase its long-term institutional power to the extent that Chinese nationals are among the top three nationalities among UN staff. Additionally, since 2014, China has had the highest number of interns working at the United Nations. While the number of Chinese nationals in staff positions has grown, China currently holds only one leadership position – in the Food and Agriculture Organization – in the UN development system. In the field of human rights, China has less institutional entrenchment in the UN bureaucracy and has representation in this sector, and so far, no Chinese national has held such a position, but its overall approach has evolved “from a defensive stance to setting an active agenda.”
- Growth of Structural Power: Within China’s membership in the G7 and the Security Council, its status as a permanent member has seen a certain level of normalization with the group of Western powers within a reciprocal framework to maintain the functioning of the Security Council, with both pushing for their own interests while also working to address each other’s concerns. The structural shifts related to China in the field of peace and security are not only related to the dynamics between states but also to the assumptions about the relationship between states and individuals, as demonstrated by the introduction of the Chinese Global Security Initiative announced in 2022, which focuses on the state as the cornerstone of security rather than the individual (according to the liberal vision).
In the field of development, China’s rise in status has played a role in blurring the traditional divides between the North and the South; although Western donors still provide the majority of funding for UN work with developing countries, Beijing’s expanded participation offers alternative elements that may shake up traditional donor-recipient models.
- Cognitive Power and China’s Repositioning: Cognitive and discursive practices have been linked to the prevailing meanings behind the UN’s core concepts such as “security,” “development,” and “human rights,” which are still often dominated by Western voices. However, over the past decade, China has made some progress in shaping UN discourses, actively engaging in an ongoing attempt to reinterpret UN Resolution 2758, which recognized the People’s Republic of China as the “sole legitimate representative of China” in the United Nations, and the implications of that in supporting its stance on Taiwan.
China has also taken advantage of its presidency of the Security Council since 2015 to challenge the liberal understanding of the UN Charter in general and peacekeeping in particular, by presenting an alternative understanding marketed through the “Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter,” established by Venezuela in 2021, which aims to adhere to sovereign equality between states and non-interference in internal affairs.
In the field of development, China has maximized its influence within the United Nations in this area by marketing evolved definitions of development embodied in multilateral cooperation, in addition to working on rebalancing rather than replacing the intellectual foundations of UN development work.
In summary, China competes with Western powers for dominance throughout the UN system, reflecting its interests in specific areas. Perhaps China’s unique position, which combines alliances with developing countries and the status of the five permanent members, has provided it with a set of tools that Western powers do not possess.
The general expansion in China’s economic and political capabilities has translated into an increase in its participation in the UN system, as it works to increase patterns of coercive, institutional, and structural power, contributing to normalizing its role as a great power seeking to readjust North-South relations. Finally, the emerging impacts associated with China in the field of cognitive power are evident in various UN forums, but monitoring the extent of these impacts will require a longer time frame.
Source:
Haug, S., Foot, R. & Baumann, M.-O. (May 2024) Power shifts in international organizations: China at the United Nations. Global Policy, 15(Suppl. 2), 5–17. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13368
