Communist China Pushes Its State-Centric Human Rights Model at the UN

Oct 23, 2025 - 09:54 Updated: Oct 22, 2025 - 19:02

Communist China Pushes Its State-Centric Human Rights Model at the UN

Commentary

Communist China has exploited United Nations subsidiary organizations—such as the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—for years in pushing Chinese strategic goals and objectives through relentless information and influence warfare.

These efforts aim to shield Beijing and its allies from human rights scrutiny by misdirecting attention away from their transgressions, diluting the international human rights standards by which nations are measured, and promoting a state-centric governance model to “guarantee” human rights worldwide.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities routinely use financial inducements such as Belt and Road Initiative projects, diplomatic pressure, and disinformation campaigns to influence other nations to align with Chinese interests at the United Nations.

Let us examine their latest gambit with the UNHRC.

The UN Human Rights Council

The purpose of the UNHRC is to promote and protect human rights globally, investigate and report on human rights abuses worldwide, encourage compliance with international human rights law, and periodically conduct peer reviews of U.N. member states’ human rights records. It was established in 2006 to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which had existed since 1946. The reconstituted body was repurposed to correct the politicization of its predecessor, whose membership and leadership included some of the worst human rights abusers on the planet.

There are 47 members of the UNHRC elected by the U.N. General Assembly for three-year terms. China has been a member since 2006 and has been reelected multiple times despite longstanding accusations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and other independent organizations of cultural genocide being waged against Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and other ethnic and religious minority groups in China. The fact that China was elected to the Council at all is a clear indication of the effectiveness of the CCP’s influence campaign among U.N. member nations.

CCP Exploitation of the UNHRC

As discussed in an academic paper, the CCP’s objectives at the United Nations, in general, are “to advance a vision in which China is immune from criticism, individual rights protections do not trump sovereignty, the international order has a diminished role for liberal democratic powers and scrutiny of human rights conduct, and China’s policies are seen as consistent with human rights law.”

Beijing uses the UNHRC to promote China’s state-centric model of human rights, which prioritizes “development” and “non-interference” over individual civil and political rights—in short, the classical Marxist elevation of the state (“the common good”) over the rights of individual human beings. The CCP’s objective over time is to convince a majority of other nations to accept Beijing’s crackpot state-centric definition of human rights over traditional international norms.

A good example of China prioritizing development and non-interference over individual civil and political rights was its sponsorship and successful adoption of UNHRC Resolution 41/19, titled “The Contribution of Development to the Enjoyment of All Human Rights,“ in July 2019. The resolution discusses economic growth and state-led initiatives as central to the enjoyment of human rights, while promoting CCP slogans of ”mutually beneficial cooperation“ and ”dialogue” between states rather than specific human rights accountability mechanisms, such as investigations or sanctions for violations.

It’s all about collective goals rather than individual freedoms and liberties, which are the core of Western concepts of human rights. It should be noted that Western concepts emphasize individual autonomy, liberty, and protection from state overreach, which is precisely the inverse of how the Chinese regime seeks to redefine “human rights” with the CCP in complete control.

China routinely uses its influence within the “Like-Minded Developing Countries“ to block or water down proposed UNHRC resolutions targeting its human rights record. A primary objective is to thwart any UNHRC efforts to investigate Uyghur-related civil rights issues in East Turkistan, also known as Xinjiang.

A watchtower of an alleged detention facility in Artux in Kizilsu Prefecture in northwestern Xinjiang region, China, on July 19, 2023. Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

In October 2022, Amnesty International reported that a proposed resolution to investigate the CCP’s abuses in Xinjiang failed, alluding to “political and economic interests” among member states. Beijing appeared to have lobbied African and Asian states and offered economic incentives under the Belt and Road Initiative to secure the necessary votes. For example, Eritrea and China confirmed their strategic partnership under the Belt and Road during a January 2022 visit by the Chinese foreign minister.

With credible reports from human rights groups and elsewhere indicating that China had detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and others, the defeat of this resolution was a travesty and an indication of just how useless the UNHRC has become due to CCP influence.

The Latest Affront

In its continuing efforts to gain acceptance for its state-centric model of human rights on the world stage, on Oct. 6, Beijing submitted a draft resolution to the 60^th session of the UNHRC, which was adopted without a vote. The resolution focused “on promoting and protecting economic, social and cultural rights within the context of addressing inequalities,” according to Chinese state-run media Global Times.

In the Global Times article, Chinese Ambassador Chen Xu, China’s permanent representative to the U.N. Office in Geneva, discussed the resolution and called for “strengthening multilateralism and international cooperation” and “increasing investment in economic, social and cultural rights”—the usual meaningless communist sloganeering without a whiff of consideration for traditional individual human rights such as freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, that are anathema to the CCP.

Concluding Thoughts

The Chinese regime continues to undermine and thwart the U.N. Human Rights Council from completing its assigned mission: to promote and protect human rights globally. The CCP uses persuasion, bribery, and coercion to prevent investigations into the regime’s human rights abuses while promoting a state-centric human rights model on the world stage that subjugates individual human rights to the needs of the state (and institutionalizes persecution of citizens at the whim of the state!).

No wonder U.S. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14199—titled “Withdrawing the United States From and Ending Funding to Certain United Nations Organizations and Reviewing United States Support to All International Organizations”—that formally ended U.S. participation in the UNHRC in February this year. The specific justification was stated in Section 1: “UNHRC has protected human rights abusers by allowing them to use the organization to shield themselves from scrutiny.” The very definition of what the Chinese regime has been doing.

This timely order was squarely directed at the serial human rights abuser, communist China.

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