The United Nations and the US-China Conflict
The rivalry between the United States and China is also felt in the United Nations, where it obstructs vital decision-making processes. While China has quadrupled its contributions to UN organizations over the past decade, the United States has been gradually scaling back[3].
China is today the second-largest individual contributor to the United Nations, both in terms of the regular budget and funding for peacekeeping missions[4]. China has recognized the value of the UN as a political platform, and makes deft strategic use of this. Since 2013 China has assumed a leadership role in four of the fifteen specialized agencies of the United Nations: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). According to scholars studying Chinese activities in the United Nations, China uses these organizations to influence political debates and establish its own political terms in official documents, which then flow into the general UN discourse on peace and development. China’s activities in the Human Rights Council illustrate how it works to sway the UN discourse. Since 2013 Beijing has repeatedly used the Council as a platform for its own propaganda. Chinese representatives justified the internment of an estimated one million members of the Uigur minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region as a necessary measure for fighting Muslim extremism. In verbal and written submissions to the Human Rights Council the Chinese government calls into question the value of individual human rights and emphasizes the significance of state-led development programmes and the principles of national sovereignty and non-intervention in internal affairs. In July 2019 China’s delegates to the Human Rights Council disrupted a dialogue with opposition activists from Hong Kong. China also attempted in September 2019 to prevent another appearance by opposition activists from Hong Kong before the Human Rights Council, where they intended to report on violence by security forces against demonstrators.
The US Administration has not to date responded in a decisive way to China’s policy towards the United Nations. In 2018 the United States withdrew from the Human Rights Council. In late November 2019 President Trump signed a bill enabling economic sanctions against individuals and the Hong Kong government in the event of human rights violations. Another bill banned the sale of crowd control software by American companies to the Chinese government. But the President had little choice, as a two-thirds majority in Congress would have overturned any presidential veto against China-critical legislation. In earlier statements on the protests in Hong Kong, Trump had indicated that he regarded the treatment of the opposition as an internal matter for China.
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In other cases, that caused a great stir, Trump has reduced America’s financial contributions to the UN. One example is Washington’s withdrawal from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) after almost seventy years of membership. China on the other hand increased its contributions to UNRWA from about €300,000 annually to more than €2 million in 2018[5]. In 2019 the Trump Administration again threatened repeatedly to make swingeing cuts to Washington’s financial contributions to the United Nations. Even in cases where US Congress prevented budget cuts, the Administration indirectly denies funds by declining to actually transfer approved payments. At the beginning of December 2019 Washington’s arrears at the UN amounted to more than €950 million. Although Washington eventually transferred more than half of its outstanding debt, the delay by its biggest single contributor forced the UN to initiate spending cuts.
Conclusion
In modern world tending to globalization the US – China confrontation cannot be bilateral sino-american problem. It affects all countries of the world and international organizations. The most visible threat to development and global stability is the disruption of global economic system due to the behavior of both of countries. Both the United States and China have a significant impact on the world market and its restructuring connected with the Sino-American trade confrontation, forces third countries to adapt to new realities which causes economic slow-down. Moreover, US and China through the repeated violations of WTO principles undermine the organization’s future viability and legitimacy as a multilateral trade system.
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The reasons of the trade rivalry are largely related to the geopolitical confrontation between the two countries. China’s rise to become a great economic, political and military power and its increased geopolitical influence has put the US influence on the world stage under threat, so both countries began to defend their interests. The geopolitical rivalry threatens to the existing world order and the role of international organizations in solving global and regional problems. Nowadays the world order changes because of rising the geopolitical influence of China, and the behavior of both countries, violation of the rules of multilateral organizations undermines the ways of multilateral solving of the international problems.
Resources
1. Strategic Rivalry between United States and China: Causes, Trajectories, and Implications for Europe. URL: https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2020RP04/#en-d18411e2590
2. White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C., 2017).
3. See Chad P. Bown, Eujn Jung and Eva Zhang, Trump Has Gotten China to Lower Its Tariffs, Just toward Everyone Else (Washington, D.C.: PIIE, 12 June 2019),URL: https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy-watch/trump-has-gotten-china-lower-its-tariffs-just-toward
4. Kristine Lee, “Coming Soon to the United Nations: Chinese Leadership and Authoritarian Values: As Washington Steps Back, Beijing Will Take Charge”, Foreign Affairs, 16 September 2019, URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-09-16/coming-soon-united-nations-chinese-leadership-and-authoritarian-values
5. United Nations Peacekeeping website, “How We Are Funded”, URL: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/how-we-are-funded
6. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), “China Provides US$ 2.35 Million in Support of UNRWA Food Assistance in Gaza”, 21 December 2018, URL: https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/china-provides-us-235-million-support-unrwa-food-assistance-gaza
[1] White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C., 2017).
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[2] See Chad P. Bown, Eujn Jung and Eva Zhang, Trump Has Gotten China to Lower Its Tariffs, Just toward Everyone Else (Washington, D.C.: PIIE, 12 June 2019),URL: https://www.piie.com/blogs/
trade-and-investment-policy-watch/trump-has-gotten-china-lower-its-tariffs-just-toward
[3] Kristine Lee, “Coming Soon to the United Nations: Chinese Leadership and Authoritarian Values: As Washington Steps Back, Beijing Will Take Charge”, Foreign Affairs, 16 September 2019, URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/
2019-09-16/coming-soon-united-nations-chinese-leadership-and-authoritarian-values
[4] United Nations Peacekeeping website, “How We Are Funded”, URL: https://
peacekeeping.un.org/en/how-we-are-funded
[5] United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), “China Provides US$ 2.35 Million in Support of UNRWA Food Assistance in Gaza”, 21 December 2018, URL: https://www.unrwa.org/
newsroom/press-releases/china-provides-us-235-million-support-unrwa-food-assistance-gaza
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