There is evidence of China’s increasing use of “aggressive” means to “coerce” states to back their position or their candidates towards a steady acquisition of key official positions in multiple multilateral organisations, a report by an influential UK parliamentary panel warned on Thursday.
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) said its evidence spoke of an increasingly “bullying” stance of China in its dealing with organisations such as the United Nations and World Health Organisation (WHO).
In its ‘In the room: the UK’s role in multilateral diplomacy’ report, the committee calls upon the UK to take a more proactive role in combating the influence of countries who seek to manipulate and undermine multilateral organisations and mobilise the soft power of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to strengthen democracies.
“The report found evidence of China’s increasing use of aggressive means, including exploiting bilateral economic leverage, to coerce states to back their position or their candidates and then using the organisations to shift policies away from the cooperation the organisations were created to promote,” the FAC notes.