What does the People’s Republic of China want from the UN?
The answer is not just one thing; the PRC does a lot of manipulating, politicking, and selective funding. Its activity is not so fragmented, though, that people don’t notice a pattern.
In 2021, the Indian think tank Gateway House found that Red China “is in a dominant position in several critical multilateral bodies, in both personnel and funding. The most prominent are the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, and the International Maritime Organisation.”
Beijing has steadily increased its influence in the United Nations by a combination of increased funding, strategic placement of key officials, and selection of “the most influential agencies and bodies to lead. The clusters of agencies headed by China are directly and indirectly linked to its domestic agendas.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress was moved to publish a report on the CCP’s machinations, “Inside China’s Strategy to Reshape the United Nations” by the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the CCP. The Committee noted that Red China’s growing influence “alters the UN’s operations and structure” and that its investigation had uncovered “a myriad of ways in which the PRC manipulates the UN system to subtly, yet effectively, promote and integrate China’s national objectives.”
Findings
There are other echoes of Gateway’s insights in the report’s four key findings:
● Beijing “utilizes monetary contributions to redefine UN norms to advance its own national interests.” More on this in a moment.
● “The PRC captures key bodies by securing critical positions for its personnel to advance its national objectives.”
● “The PRC strategically deploys its troops within the UN peacekeeping structure to regions of economic and strategic interest.” This is hard power disguised as soft power.
● The Reds use fake nongovernmental organizations within the UN to advance their interests “sometimes through fraudulent and criminal means.” (They create GONGOS—government-organized NGOs—to pursue state ends.)
It is not through annual dues payments that the CCP expresses its love for the UN. For indeed, “[Red] China, like many UN member states, pays its mandatory contribution late. In 2025, Beijing’s annual dues of $685.7 million were wired in late October, eight months after the February deadline. It has yet [as of May 2026] to pay its share for 2026.”
The PRC deploys its UN funding in a more targeted way.
Peace, development
For instance, in 2015, Xi Jinping announced a Peace and Development Trust Fund of $1 billion to “support the UN’s work” and “contribute more to world peace and development.”
“Not that the $1 billion promised by Xi ever fully materialized,” observed reporter Claudia Rosett. “By the time the deal was signed in 2016, China had arranged a big discount for itself, downsizing the gift to $200 million over 10 years, or $20 million a year.” This was okay with the UN. Because the money did not go into the general budget, it provided a segregated slush fund under the secretary general’s control.
“China’s direct cash infusion to the secretariat, totaling $20 million a year, is split into two subfunds. One funnels $10 million annually to the executive office of the Secretary-General, to help him promote ‘Peace and Security.’ The other subfund pours $10 million a year, earmarked for ‘Sustainable Development,’ to a satrapy within the secretariat, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which, since 2007, at the pleasure of the Secretary-General, has been run by—you guessed it—[Red] China.” That money is paid out to Beijing-approved projects.
And so, as Rosett noted in 2020, “China’s Peace and Development fund has translated into a stronger UN commitment to the goals and activities of China” rather than the reverse. Funding has been extended to 2030.
The UN itself says: “The United Nations and the [communist] Donor Government aim to work together to achieve the goals of the Charter of the United Nations through implementation of innovative, forward-looking and pro-active projects and activities financed by the [communists’] Trust Fund.”
More soft power, at a reasonable price.
Communism with UN characteristics
In January, however, we tasted some limits of CCP–UN coziness. “UN special rapporteurs and other experts said…there were ‘persistent’ allegations of state-imposed forced labor affecting ethnic minorities within the far-western Xinjiang region and other parts of China.”
Beijing’s response, through its foreign ministry, was that such “slander cannot be tolerated…. The so-called concerns of certain experts are entirely fabricated and fundamentally groundless.”
No surprise there. Writing in Global Asia, Rosemary Foot suggests that a UN in which Beijing had everything its own way would give less emphasis to human protection and place “more emphasis on the development arm of the UN. The UN Human Rights Council could evolve into a body that avoids accountability for abuses and gives overwhelming emphasis to collective rights and the right to development.”
Makes communistic sense, in a way: a world where industrialization, collectivization and economic production pushes concern for human rights aside. A world overseen not by the Reds directly but by a global organization acting as a front providing communism with UN characteristics.
In 2023, the French reporter Célhia de Lavarène asked a UN dignitary, “Is China running the UN?” The answer remains not quite yet. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
