China’s influence at the United Nations: words and deeds
Understanding China’s influence at the UN is essential for comprehending contemporary international relations
We investigate China’s influence at the United Nations by focusing on the promotion of its narratives (words) and its voting behaviour (deeds). For the former, we assess the extent to which China’s global initiatives have become embedded in UN discourse compared to Western initiatives. For the latter, we assess the degree to which countries, regions and voting coalitions align their UN General Assembly votes with China compared to the US. When it comes to words, China’s global initiatives are sometimes louder than the West’s. More specifically, the Belt and Road Initiative has had a much greater impact on UN discourse than any Western initiative. Other Chinese global initiatives do not clearly stand out from those of the West, with the Global Compact for Migration mentioned more frequently at the UN than any Chinese initiative other than the BRI. We also find that Chinese initiatives are more self-referential. Thematically, both Chinese and Western initiatives are very focused on security as well as aid and human rights. Moving to voting patterns, countries’ income levels are a key determinant of alignment in voting. Poorer countries are much more aligned with China than with the US. North America and the European Union, in that order, are generally more aligned with the US than with China and these trends are much more stable than one could expect given China’s growing economic influence.
This is an output of China Horizons, Bruegel's contribution in the project Dealing with a resurgent China (DWARC). This project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions under grant agreement No. 101061700.