The World Health Organization has come under China’s growing—and malign—influence

President Trump has announced that the United States will stop funding the World Health Organization (WHO), a specialized UN agency, saying its “Sino-centric” behavior has been a catalyst for the global spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For the blissfully ignorant, this is merely the latest evidence of his “America First” approach toward foreign policy. However, for those who have been watching the UN system, Trump is absolutely correct. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark and we are going to have to confront it sooner or later…

Perhaps more damningly, Taiwanese diplomats have claimed the WHO ignored early warnings in December about Covid-19 trasmission from its own experts – in order to please Beijing – indicating that we might have been saved this pandemic if the WHO had merely listened.

This corruption of the WHO’s function is symptomatic of a wider trend, which has seen Beijing take over one-third of the UN’s 15 specialized agencies, appointing its officials to important posts where they immediately beginning implementing “Sino-centric” policies, using a combination of arm-twisting and lobbying. 

And while all countries seek to influence the global system through the UN, China’s influence has been particularly hostile toward the “liberal” character imbued into the system by countries like the US and UK in 1950s.

Consider the recent news that China that has been appointed to the Human Rights Council. This is the same nation that the BBC revealed had built concentration camps for millions of its Muslim Uyghurs in 2018, and it now holds the power to appoint human rights investigators to look at arbitrary detention, freedom of speech transgressions, and enforced disappearances – presumably because they are all areas where Beijing has excelled. 

Consider too how Chinese officials – from Huawei – are said to be attempting to push through internet protocol “reforms” at the UN agency – the International Telecommunications Union – that could favour authoritarian approaches toward data. The Director General of ITU is another Chinese official.