The funds Beijing provides allow the U.N. secretary general to sidestep oversight, critics of the arrangement told NR.
A top United Nations aide lauded China’s contributions to global governance during a trip to Beijing for the annual meeting of a murky Chinese-government funding vehicle.
Washington views this structure, a trust fund, as blatant Chinese Communist Party influence-peddling within the U.N.
During the May 17 meeting, Courtenay Rattray, the top staffer for U.N. secretary general António Guterres, “praised China as a pillar of multilateralism and fully affirmed the important role China plays in global governance,” according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
The ministry said in a statement said that Rattray was in town for a meeting of the committee that oversees the U.N. Peace and Development Trust Fund — an entity fully funded by China’s government and controlled jointly with the office of U.N. secretary general António Guterres.
The U.N. diplomat met with Chinese assistant foreign minister Miao Deyu, who talked up the Communist Party’s revisionist version of World War II history and Beijing’s commitment to furthering the U.N.’s development goals. The trust fund meeting took place separately during Rattray’s trip.
Senator Jim Risch (R., Idaho), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned the trust fund “as a tool for Beijing to pursue its own goals under the façade of doing good,” in a statement to National Review. He added: “China only participates in international development if it serves Beijing’s malign purposes.”
Sources familiar with the U.S. government’s understanding of the fund said that it’s one example of China’s broader efforts to co-opt the U.N. to export its authoritarian system.
The U.N. has not released a statement about Rattray’s meeting with Chinese officials to discuss the trust fund, and a spokesman for Guterres did not respond to a request for comment this week.
Since the trust fund’s establishment in 2015, critics have viewed it as a way for China and the secretary general’s office to sidestep oversight.
The fund receives $20 million from China every year, half of which supports a sub-fund directed by Guterres’s office. The other half is overseen by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs — a branch led by Liu Zhenmin, a longtime Chinese diplomat who served as the country’s climate envoy. Rattray is chairman of the steering committee, whose other members include the Chinese ambassador to the U.N., Liu, and other officials from China’s government.
“The U.N. Peace and Development Trust Fund’s ‘governance’ structure makes it rife for abuse by both the secretary general and the Chinese party-state,” Kelley Currie, a former U.S. representative to the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council, said.
“The only reason it isn’t considered a bribe is because it goes to the secretary general’s official accounts rather than into his personal bank account, but the intention is to provide the SG with something he otherwise would not have: an unaccountable slush fund he can do with as he likes, with no UNGA oversight, courtesy of the Chinese authorities,” she continued, using an acronym for the U.N. General Assembly, which is nominally tasked with reviewing the U.N. budget.
China, meanwhile, touts the trust fund at U.N. events to promote its claims that it champions the developing world, sources familiar with the U.S. government’s understanding of the fund told National Review.
The Chinese foreign ministry said that the fund has supported more than 180 projects and “benefitted” over 100 developing countries.
China essentially controls the steering committee that Rattray chairs, and it selects the projects that the fund supports, the sources familiar with the U.S. understanding of the trust fund said. Those sources also called the fund’s operation’s entirely opaque and said that there are no mechanisms for scrutiny by any other U.N. members, including the U.S., thus allowing the Chinese Communist Party to advance its interests without oversight.
In 2019, the U.N.’s internal audit arm urged officials to strengthen the process by which it reviews potential projects for funding. There’s no public information on whether those recommendations were implemented.
The trust fund’s website lists trust fund projects, including an array of development and security focused initiatives, though this is typically updated over a year after projects are approved. Nearly a dozen of the projects that have already been disclosed involve Beijing’s notorious Belt and Road Initiative.
The sources familiar with the U.S. understanding of the fund told NR that the fund has incorporated BRI participation into U.N. programs and policies. It has also pivoted to finance development projects under the Global Development Initiative, a signature global influence push launched by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Risch said that exposing the trust fund’s operations will be a Trump administration goal at the U.N. “The Fund is a U.N.-sanctioned farce, and simply put: ludicrous and extremely troubling. I know that our future ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, will expose this corruption and push back on China’s influence at the U.N.”