China is focusing on strengthening multilateralism as the United States seems to be jettisoning such international collaboration. Fu Cong, the Chinese permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Feb. 3 that China would lead a conversation on multiparty cooperation and global governance as part of its agenda for the Security Council rotating presidency this month. China is a permanent member of the body, with veto power.
“China will hold a signature event on multilateralism and global governance,” Fu, 59, said. “As we are faced with all these global challenges, no country can stay aloof, and that includes the United States.” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to preside over the high-level open debate on Feb. 18. Fu said it was unclear if Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, will participate.
China chose this topic — which coincides with the UN’s 80th anniversary year — to reaffirm not only its commitment to multilateralism and improving global governance but also to strengthening the role of the Security Council as the world is experiencing increasing insecurity and the Council appears to be unable to tackle many of the crises effectively.
At the UN media briefing on Feb. 3, Fu, who took up his role in April 2024, was assertive, playing up China as an equal global economic and political power to the US. He described the US and China as the “two biggest countries in the world” at least twice during his one-hour engagement with journalists. He fielded a wide array of questions on the same day that the White House imposed a 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports to the US.
China’s main focus in the Council this month is a direct response to the America First approach of President Donald Trump, but it also aligns with Beijing’s longstanding foreign policy, said Jeremy Chan, an analyst with Eurasia Group, a risk-management firm. China has always been pro-free trade and pro-development and advocating to resolve global disputes through such forums as the Security Council.
In the same light, Richard Gowan, the UN expert for the International Crisis Group, a research entity, believes Trump’s foreign policy and anti-UN stance have only “teed up the debate for Beijing.”
“Wang Yi will cash in,” Gowan said.
Yet, despite Fu’s boldly patriotic responses to queries from reporters on Feb. 3 about the US-China relationship, experts say that Beijing will play up the country’s strength only when it’s beneficial. Courtney Fung, a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute, said that China would frame any fallout between the two countries as a consequence of America’s shifting foreign policy while positioning itself as a promoter of “true multilateralism.”
“China will only selectively fill a US leadership vacuum when it suits Beijing — not every US departure will be of equal interest or opportunity to PRC players,” Fung said. “PRC diplomats have to balance foreign policy success against high expectations, its growing regular budget burdens and parochial interests.” (PRC stands for People’s Republic of China.)
As China presides over the 15-member Council, Chan said Beijing would most likely use the setting to highlight some of the trade tensions being triggered by the US. Fu spent a lot of time discussing the 10 percent tariff imposed by Trump on goods from China at the Feb. 3 briefing. Trump stated that the tariff would remain until he said there was improvement in stopping the flow of fentanyl into the US.
“Chinese officials have failed to take the actions necessary to stem the flow of precursor chemicals to known criminal cartels and shut down money laundering by transnational criminal organizations,” Trump said in a Feb. 1 statement on fentanyl.
In response to Trump’s actions, China has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization and launched its own tariffs with threats of further sanctions on American companies operating in China. Experts say Beijing’s response pales in comparison with the US tariffs but demonstrates China’s willingness to engage Washington in talks instead of a trade war. However, this position did not stop Fu from taking a swipe at the White House, advising it to control the demand for fentanyl within its population instead of blaming others.
The US indeed has a drug-addiction problem, with nearly 108,000 deaths recorded from overdose in 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We are firmly opposed to this unwarranted increase,” Fu said of the tariff. “We do believe that this is in violation of the WTO rules. We do hope that the US would look at its own problems and find a solution that is beneficial to itself and also to the whole world. Frankly speaking, I don’t think that raising tariffs is beneficial to the US itself.”
The political tensions between the two countries extends far beyond trade and narcotics. The Republican-led US government has been clear in its aim to curtail China’s alleged growing influence in the UN. There is a bipartisan belief, reflected in remarks heard in Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings last month, that China has manipulated the UN personnel system to install its nationals into the UN workforce.
Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) said China has increased the employment of its nationals in the UN by 85 percent from 2009 to 2021. As of 2023, the UN had 1,647 Chinese nationals employed, according to the organization’s human resources data. More than 5,000 Americans were employed at the UN during the same period.
Elise Stefanik, the Trump appointee who is expected to start working as US ambassador soon, said she would aim to block China’s junior-to-senior-position pipeline at the UN, adding that more Americans should take up those roles instead. “We have to have a mission to recruit at the most junior levels to work their way up into the system,” she said during her confirmation hearing on Jan. 21.
Gowan of the Crisis Group said Fu and his US counterpart might get into an initial frenzy but would ultimately simmer down. “I think the Chinese will want to avoid an all-out rhetorical war with Stefanik once she arrives in New York,” he said.
Gowan added: “The Chinese don’t like getting tangled up in very public disputes at the UN and were rattled when Trump used the UN as a platform to bash Beijing over Covid-19 at the end of his first term. So I suspect the Chinese will fire a few warning shots, and Stefanik will respond in kind, but both sides may want to cool the temperature after that.”
Africa is another focus for China as Trump’s aid freezes are expected to significantly affect a wide range of public health and other services in the continent. Chan of Eurasia Group said support for Africa is another fault line for the US-China relationship. China’s engagement with Africa has been a defining feature of its foreign policy, notably through its Belt and Road infrastructure projects. Beijing recommitted to increasing investments on the continent after the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit was hosted in Beijing last year and China primed itself as a better development ally to African leaders who are already relying on Beijing for loans and other support.
“Beijing likely believes that Trump’s transactional foreign policy and general neglect of Africa will work to China’s benefit by increasing the attractiveness of its approach to development and conflict resolution,” Chan said.
Ambassador Fu said that China wants to work with the US on areas of “common interest,” naming counterterrorism, transnational crime and climate change. On Feb. 27, the Council will hold its annual dialogue with UN peacekeeping police, focusing on improving the role of law enforcement personnel in peacekeeping missions.
The Council will also debate peacekeeping missions in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Libya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Other regular agenda items include Mideast meetings on the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire and violence in the West Bank; Yemen; and Syria.
On Feb. 24, the Council will likely meet to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at the latter’s request by Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya. (Fu said that a “countermeeting” by Russia would also be in the works.)
“I want to emphasize, despite the political differences between our countries, as diplomats we need to be professional,” Fu emphasized, regarding the US. “There are issues that the diplomats . . . our mission is to build bridges, and I do hope that I can work with the new PR of the US in building bridges for our two countries.”
Chan said the trade war and other major political tensions between Beijing and Washington might stymie progress even on issues in which they share mutual interests. “Rising US-China tensions will likely limit any room for cooperation between the two countries at the UN or other multilateral forums,” he said.
Country Profile
President of China: Xi Jinping
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Wang Yi
Type of Government: One-party rule
Year China Joined the UN: 1945 (as the Republic of China; in 1971, the People’s Republic of China was recognized by the General Assembly as the legitimate representative of China)
Years in the Security Council: A permanent member (along with Britain, France, Russia and the US)
Population: 1,425,671,352 (2023)
Per capita CO2 emission figures per person (in tons): 8.3; world average, 4.7
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Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
