As President Donald Trump announces a halt in World Health Organization funding, accusing it of kowtowing to China over the coronavirus outbreak, Beijing is building on a well-established strategy of leveraging its global standing wherever the US lets go of the wheel.
For years, Chinese nationals have been taking up positions at the head of and lower down UN agencies as the Asian powerhouse ploughs considerable resources into building on its international financial and military relationships.
China’s long game on global influence is particularly apparent in Africa, where 10 years ago the continent’s debt to the world’s number two economy was minimal.
Today, a UN official said, it stands at some $140 billion as Beijing ramps up investments through the Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s signature global infrastructure project.
Beijing’s overtures have placed it in a powerful position to leverage African support on various issues and at international agencies.
Led by Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO is accused by Washington of uncritically accepting China’s early assertions that the virus was not spread between humans and of wrongly praising Beijing’s “transparency” over the magnitude of the crisis.
“What we have seen for more than 10 years, and especially since 2012 with Xi Jinping, is a real push from Chinese diplomacy to restructure global governance,” Alice Ekman, the senior analyst in charge of the Asia portfolio at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, told AFP.
“It’s a lofty ambition since China is talking about ‘piloting’ this restructuring.”
The same phenomenon — the US withdrawing and China making its mark, but never directly — is notable at several UN agencies.
Along with its availability for an increasing number of peacekeeping missions, Beijing has become the second largest financial contributor to the UN, overtaking Japan but behind the US.
Away from the UN’s activities directed from its New York headquarters, China has wielded its financial clout in the organization’s many agencies worldwide, including UNESCO in Paris.
Washington’s retreat since 2019 from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, over alleged bias against Israel, came as China was increasing its influence to become the agency’s largest compulsory net contributor.
Beijing has a strong presence in programs for the education of women and girls, and the second highest official at UNESCO, Xing Qu, is Chinese.
“They have succeeded in finding a balance — being very present without imposing,” an official told AFP, on condition of anonymity so that they could speak frankly.
