The fact that China and the United Nations are thick as thieves is an undisputed assumption ubiquitous to all, but, what keeps surprising the world community is the extent to which the UN goes in lying prostrate in front of Beijing. Call it the naivety of the UN or the wonder of Yuan, the international body has entirely lost its credibility. A Wall Street Journal report has come into the light which states that United Nations Secretariat in New York is now working with Beijing to set up joint global data hubs based in China; essentially handing surveillance mega-powers to the communist state to spy upon the member states.
The report states that the project developed in close coordination between China and the UN will have a research centre for crunching data from UN member states and a geospatial centre to enlist China’s prowess with satellite surveillance.
Officially, the aim is to streamline and enhance the UN’s increasingly data-driven projects. This China-UN complex would be integrated into the UN’s master plan for global development, Agenda 2030. However, the aim elucidated by the UN is just a fancy way to whitewash the surveillance tactics of Beijing.
Having run into difficulties collecting the desired data, the UN needed help to boost reporting and unify standards across its 193 member states and throughout its agencies, departments and initiatives. Interestingly, China, the world’s biggest tech surveillance state swooped in quietly, and the UN gave reins of all the data in its hand.
UN records show that the locations have been chosen. Memorandums of intent have been signed between the Chinese government and the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Earlier in 2018, the UN had to backtrack on a pact with the Chinese telecommunications giant Tencent Holdings to provide videoconferencing and text services for the international organization’s 75th anniversary, following backlash from U.S. officials and lawmakers as well as human rights groups. However, nothing as such has happened this time around, and China has gone ahead by signing a deal that could spell doom for the member states and their precious data.
Reported by TFI, a Shenzen-based company Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co. Limited had recently made the headlines when found that it was snooping over 10,000 prominent citizens including President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among others.
The collusion of the UN and China is not a new phenomenon, and we at TFI have extensively covered the rot infesting inside the UN.
Every other body of the UN has been drenched in the red of Communist China, and it wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that the UN has managed to turn itself into a font of anti-World and pro-China activities.
China has injected millions of dollars and infiltrated top-tier positions in nearly every international body, and it is not afraid to use them to its favour every now and then.
The United States of America under President Donald Trump has let go of the wheel of major international organizations by cutting funding and participation in these institutions (Read; UN, WHO, FAO). As a result, there has been a major power vacuum, and China has grabbed this opportunity with both hands.
Whether through specialized UN agencies or peacekeeping, China is racing to fill the vacuum in international leadership left by the withdrawal of the US from multilateral platforms. China is taking advantage of the lack of convergence among the permanent members of the Security Council on many global issues.
The Chinese government, the second-largest contributor (10.8%) to the UN budget, has been considering the question of how to send more Chinese to work in the UN system. Beijing has been continuously revamping its human resource deployment to organizations like the UN.
Another example of a UN body going China’s way is UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 2011, the United States cut off $80 million in annual funding to UNESCO—about 22 per cent of its entire budget. China raced to fill the void, pledging millions of dollars in extra-budgetary support for education programs. Beijing has increased its monetary contributions to the United Nations fivefold in the past decade, thereby cementing its position to control any narrative that it thinks suits its stance.
Union Nations Humans Rights Commission (UNHRC) has also been uncharacteristically mum on the entire Uighur Muslims escapade happening under its nose. At the UNGA in 2019, the body did not take any action against China, albeit accepted its version that its concentration camps are just “vocational training centres”. The 2020 UNGA didn’t bring any significant changes either.
UN is a toothless organization that is existing solely on the crumbs being offered to it by the communist state, which is milking the reputation of the organization to push its agendas. From pushing the fake Coronavirus vaccines to now installing a global surveillance syndicate, China has engulfed UN like an amoeba engulfs its prey.
