Chinese officials also pressured independent think tanks to use their preferred language, a new German Marshall Fund report says.
A recent report details key incidents in China’s painstaking effort to wipe politically inconvenient references to Taiwan from the U.N., in one case even securing the revision of a document released in 2000 to reflect Beijing’s line.
The German Marshall Fund compiled case studies documenting this U.N. pressure campaign in a study released last month.
China’s campaign at the U.N. has resulted in Taiwan’s isolation from a key international diplomatic hub, yielding some disastrous consequences. Taiwan’s exclusion from the World Health Organization caused the loss of “millions of lives,” Taiwan’s de facto U.N. ambassador told National Review last year, referring to his country’s ignored warnings about the Covid pandemic.
Most reporting on China’s Taiwan-isolation campaign has focused on the WHO, as well as the U.N.’s refusal to admit people with Taiwanese passports onto any of its premises.
The case studies compiled by the German Marshall Fund document other instances in which China has even altered the historical record at the U.N. to fit its foreign-policy goals.
“Perhaps the most egregious cases are the ones in which UN personnel revised historical documents, replacing original mentions of ‘Taiwan’ with ‘Taiwan, province of China,’” the GMF report said. The think tank found that that change of language had been made in at least two documents at the International Telecommunication Union, the U.N.’s telecom-standard-setting agency.
An ITU report on the use of telecom technology during natural disasters from 2000 was altered to use China’s preferred language on Taiwan, according to a January 2021 version of the document highlighted by the German Marshall Fund. While the report first referred to “Taiwan,” the version viewed more than two decades later referred to “Taiwan, province of China.”
Another ITU report on humanitarian assistance from 2014 was altered to reflect that language as well, the GMF researchers found.
China uses its own cynical interpretation of a 1971 U.N. resolution to claim that the U.N. must recognize its claims over Taiwan and has, in recent years, employed that argument to convince U.N. officials to block Taiwanese nationals from even stepping foot on U.N. grounds.
The ITU has been led by a Chinese national, Houlin Zhou, since his first election to the post in 2014. Under Houlin, the ITU has signed agreements integrating China’s Belt and Road Initiative into its work and advanced Huawei’s work with the agency.
The GMF report also found that Chinese officials successfully pressured independent think tanks to alter their references to Taiwan in research papers. The officials threatened to block those organizations’ participation in an annual nuclear-materials conference hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency if they refused to comply.
In 2020 and 2021, China also blocked the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group that runs Wikipedia, from an observer seat at the World Intellectual Property Organization, over Wikipedia articles that do not reflect Beijing’s position on Taiwan.
China’s efforts to pressure countries, international organizations, and nonprofit groups to back its line on Taiwan has been extensively documented. As GMF’s research shows, Beijing is also working to alter historical documents as another instrument in this effort.