How China has been seizing control at the UN and WHO

China indirectly controls the World Health Organisation with the discreet help of ‘friendly’ states in emerging countries to whom it pays money in exchange for their votes, claims veteran French journalist Pierre-Antoine Donnet, author of a new book, China, the Super Predator: A Challenge for the Planet, out this month (February, 2024).

Donnet, a former Beijing correspondent who speaks Mandarin, told me: ‘The WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been elected with the active support of China and its allies and friends. In return, he first closed his eyes on the origin of the covid-19 virus before becoming more vocal and criticising China’s opacity on the matter.’

The WHO is currently embroiled in controversy over its proposed ‘pandemic treaty’ and amendments to the International Health Regulations which, critics insist, will encroach on the sovereignty of member countries, reduce the individual’s right to decide on health, curb freedom of speech, and, with an ability to declare a pandemic, impose controls on travel, communication, assembly and the workplace. See my recent article ‘Call for Ireland’s UN team to reject WHO’s ‘pandemic treaty’’).

China’s steady infiltration of UN affairs is one of many startling scenarios revealed in Donnet’s book which warns of the communist regime’s bid for world domination — albeit that this ambition is now beset by geopolitical difficulties — and how China, with Russia, poses the main threat to Western democracy. Donnet also details China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongols, its silencing of all forms of dissent, and its repression of Hong Kong.

China, the Super Predator was first published in French in 2021 and has now been updated for the English edition and includes an afterword by Donnet.

He said: ‘China has in recent years considerably strengthened its presence at the UN headquarters in New York, where it now has an efficient lobbying operation. According to my own sources there, ‘There are dozens of ‘little hands’ all over the UN premises, ‘interns’ without official status. We see them everywhere’.’

Indeed, totalitarian China with its ruling Communist Party, is the second-largest contributor to UN budgets and peace-keeping operations in the world, and has made remarkable progress in claiming leadership roles in major international organisations in recent years.

In China, the Super Predator, published by Changemaker Books on February 23, Donnet points out that, in only a few years, China has seized control of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Industrial Development Organisation, the International Telecommunications Union, the International Civil Aviation Organisation — ‘and, indirectly, the WHO’.

Expanding on passages in his book, Donnet said that in June, 2019, China’s vice-minister of Agriculture, Qu Dongyu, was elected in the first ballot as director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), beating France’s Catherine Geslain-Naneelle, thanks to massive support from emerging countries.

In November, 2018, Chinese communications and information technology (IT) engineer Zhao Houlin was re-elected for a second four-year term as head of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In March, 2015, China’s Liu Fang was elected secretary-general of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

In June, 2013, seasoned Chinese economic and financial manager Li Yong was appointed director-general of the UN Industrial Organisation (UNIDO). A Chinese national appointed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also headed the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Head of Interpol

China’s Margaret Chan led the WHO between 2007 and 2017. China’s former deputy minister of the Security Ministry, Meng Hongwei, was the head of Interpol until 2018 before he was arrested during a trip to China and sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison for corruption.

At the UN Security Council, where it has been one of the five permanent members since 1971, China has exercised its veto power with relative parsimony, but it generally allies itself with Russia against the United States, the United Kingdom and France, said Donnet.

China has also, with increasing success, blocked at UN bodies, in particular, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Western attempts to adopt resolutions denouncing the human rights situation in China. Beijing even managed to have the council adopt, in July, 2019, a resolution that it had itself submitted and which was largely favourable to China.

This resolution stipulated, among other things, that ‘meeting the aspiration of the people for better life is the priority of each State’, and that efforts ‘to eradicate poverty … [are] of significant importance for the enjoyment of human rights’. China’s membership of the Human Rights Council was renewed last year.

Donnet added that, in 2019, Beijing overtook Washington in the number of its embassies and consulates throughout the world, with a total of 276 diplomatic missions against 271 for the United States. In peacekeeping operations, China has a place in the front row, having more than 2,500 Chinese soldiers in countries including Lebanon, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

Pierre-Antoine Donnet worked as a reporter for 37 years at Agence France-Presse (AFP). His main postings were Beijing (1984–1989), Tokyo (1993–1999), Warsaw (1999–2001), Bureau Chief, Nicosia (2001–2005), as the AFP regional chief editor for the Middle East, Paris (2005–2006), Global News chief editor, New York (2010–2012), and AFP correspondent at the United Nations Headquarters. He now lives in Meudon, France.

• See also my article of December, 2022: ‘An urgent warning for the West’.