How Communist China Is Bending the UN to Its Will

Commentary

When the U.N. General Assembly convened in New York City on Sept. 22, journalists from two independent outlets were notably absent.

A senior White House correspondent for The Epoch Times traveled with the State Department press pool to cover the meetings. Yet the U.N. denied her press credentials, claiming the newspaper was not a media outlet but a nongovernmental organization (NGO).

Two staff members from NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, submitted their applications but did not receive a confirmation. A U.N. representative merely informed NTD’s White House correspondent that she did not meet the requirements, but did not provide further details.

The U.N.’s excuses fail to hold up. The Epoch Times is now one of the largest newspapers in the United States, and publishes in 22 languages across 33 countries. Just weeks earlier, during an Aug. 26 Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump called on an NTD reporter present at the meeting to share her experience of being robbed and assaulted at gunpoint in Washington.

Yet the U.N. barred both outlets from covering its biggest annual gathering.

This is not an isolated case. For more than two decades, the U.N. has discreetly barred The Epoch Times and NTD.

Beijing’s Hand Behind the Curtain

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long viewed these media outlets as adversaries. Both were established—The Epoch Times in 2000 and NTD in 2001—with the goal of providing Chinese readers with uncensored news, advocating for press freedom, and giving a voice to those silenced in China.

The CCP fears and suppresses anyone who dares to speak the truth. Inside China, the first group of Epoch Times staff was arrested and tortured, and several were handed decade-long prison terms. Abroad, the harassment continues—violent attacks, cyberattacks, even impersonation stunts to discredit the paper by sending fake threats to U.S. federal agencies.

NTD, one of the only independent Chinese-language TV channels broadcasting by satellite into China, has been repeatedly forced off the air after Beijing pressured satellite companies.

Based on this pattern, it’s clear that Beijing has leveraged its influence within the U.N. to keep these media outlets marginalized. The actions taken against these journalists were not merely isolated incidents of censorship; rather, they are part of a larger strategy that the CCP has implemented within international institutions.

How Deep Is the CCP’s Influence Over the UN?

The latest incident is just the tip of the iceberg.

UN ‘a Staging Ground’ for CCP

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released a report in April revealing how Beijing weaponizes the U.N. and Interpol to pursue dissidents abroad.

The authors interviewed 105 people across 23 countries, including Chinese and Hong Kong dissidents, as well as Uyghurs and Tibetans targeted for criticizing Beijing’s policies. They reviewed more than 20 years’ worth of classified documents from the Chinese regime, as well as confidential materials from the U.N. and Interpol.

According to the findings, the CCP’s repression has become broader and more sophisticated, reaching into global institutions. The report states that the U.N. has been turned into “a staging ground for China’s transnational repression.”

Since 2018, the number of Chinese NGOs registered at the U.N. has doubled—yet 59 groups are essentially CCP front groups, with leadership and funding tied directly to the regime. These include entities such as the China Society for Human Rights Studies, the China Foundation for Human Rights Development, and the China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture. To outsiders, distinguishing them from genuine NGOs is challenging.

The report also revealed that Beijing has already infiltrated Interpol, using its “red notices” to launch global manhunts for dissidents. Furthermore, the CCP has leveraged its political and economic influence to pressure foreign governments and law enforcement agencies to assist in its suppression.

The investigation confirmed that the Chinese regime’s global disinformation campaigns are expanding. No longer limited to official state propaganda, the regime now covertly mobilizes overseas networks to launch attacks, which weakens the international community’s ability to hold Beijing accountable.

Experts Testify

In April 2024, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings on the CCP’s malign influence at the U.N.

Andrew Bremberg, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, testified that when he took office in 2019, four U.N. agencies were already headed by Chinese nationals, with a fifth one on the way, and that no other country had a leadership role in more than two agencies at the time. These positions enabled Beijing to influence U.N. agendas, ranging from development policy to technology standards, he added.

Kelley Currie, former U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, warned that Chinese officials at agencies such as Interpol and the International Telecommunication Union openly advanced Beijing’s interests, violating their duty of neutrality.

Suzanne Nossel, then-CEO of PEN America, noted that Beijing had made donations to U.N. initiatives to influence the agency’s projects—most notably a $200 million contribution to the U.N. Peace and Development Trust Fund. She said the fund’s steering committee mainly consisted of Chinese officials who had used the initiative to promote the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative projects.

UN Whistleblower

Also in April 2024, the UK Foreign Affairs Committee published written evidence from whistleblower Emma Reilly, a former employee of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Reilly stated in her evidence that Beijing’s methods included interfering with U.N. voting procedures, deleting criticism of China from U.N. reports, bribing U.N. officials, and even targeting activists’ families through abductions to silence dissent.

She claimed that reports by the World Health Organization and the U.N. Environment Programme on the origins of COVID-19 were altered under Chinese pressure to downplay the possibility of a lab leak.

Reilly pointed out that a U.N. human rights report on the Uyghurs included significant edits from the Chinese regime. In addition, U.N. staff secretly provided Chinese officials with the names of activists planning to attend Human Rights Council sessions, leading to the disappearance, harassment, arbitrary detention, house arrest, torture, or imprisonment in camps of their family members inside China, she said.

During two years of negotiations over the Sustainable Development Goals, from 2013 to 2015, the CCP bribed two successive presidents of the U.N. General Assembly to influence documents in favor of Beijing’s model, one that lacks democracy and freedom, she stated.

In recent years, the CCP has successfully secured numerous leadership and senior management positions across U.N. departments and agencies. According to Reilly, no other member state has ever enjoyed such sweeping influence at the very top of almost all U.N. bodies. Beijing, she warned, is working to build an international order aligned with the interests of authoritarian states, and when criticized, it now uses that very order to shield itself.

A Wake-Up Call

The CCP has been aggressively wielding its influence within the United Nations. The denial of press credentials to The Epoch Times and NTD is not simply a bureaucratic oversight; it is the result of the CCP’s prolonged campaign to manipulate the U.N. to align with its goals.

For Americans, this should be a wake-up call. If independent journalists can be barred from the U.N. at the CCP’s behest, what does that say about the agency’s integrity? If authoritarian interests can steer international agencies, how much longer can the U.N. claim to serve as a neutral forum for all nations?

The United States and its allies cannot overlook this situation.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.