As world leaders gather in New York at the annual UN General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva.
Chinese diplomats are speaking out and lobbying others at an ongoing session of the Human Rights Council to thwart a possible call for further scrutiny of what it calls its anti-extremism campaign in Xinjiang, following a UN report on abuses against Uyghurs and other largely Muslim ethnic groups in the western China border region.
The concurrent meetings, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, illustrate China's divided approach to the United Nations and its growing global influence.
Beijing looks to the UN, where it can count on support from countries it has befriended and in many cases assisted financially, as a counterweight to U.S.-led blocs such as the Group of Seven, which have grown increasingly hostile toward China.
“China sees the UN as an important forum that it can use to further its strategic interests and goals, and to reform the global order,” said Helena Legarda from the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
While holding up the United Nations as a model of multilateralism, China rejects criticism or decisions that the ruling Communist Party sees as counter to its interests. Its diplomats struck back at the report published last month by the U.N. Human rights office raising concerns about possible “crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang — vowing to suspend cooperation with the office and blasting what it described as a Western plot to undermine China's rise.
China had pushed hard to block the report on Xinjiang, delaying its release for more than a year. In the end, the information did come out — but just minutes before embattled U.N. Human rights chief Michelle Bachelet left office.
Like the United States, China feels a certain freedom to ignore U.N. Institutions when it wants: The Trump administration pulled the U.S. Out of the Human Rights Council in 2018, accusing it of anti-Israel bias. The Biden administration jumped back in this year, and has made a priority of defending Israel in the 47-member-state body.
Also like the United States, China leverages its influence to get its way — effectively stymieing an investigation by the U.N.'s World Health Organization into whether China was the birthplace of the coronavirus pandemic.
