Highlight 12/2025: To what extent is China leveraging the Human Rights Council to shape its political goals?
Chloé Bühlmann, 13 February 2025
Since the 2000s, Chinese NGOs of all kinds have been multiplying. More than that, they are increasingly seeking to establish themselves abroad, and particularly in Geneva, with the Confucius Institutes leading the way, backed by the Chinese government. Julien Beauvallet, Head of Civil Society Service at CAGI, explains that NGOs present in Geneva, the international city and host of the Human Rights Council (HRC), benefit from access to humanitarian agencies, which gives them legitimacy and credibility. Although their presence is sometimes contested, these Chinese NGOs are on the rise, including the GONGOs, governmental NGOs financed and encouraged by the Chinese Communist Party..
Along with India and, to a lesser extent, Turkey, China accounted for 34 of the 47 GONGOs identified by Reuters in 2015 as operating in the UN system. Their existence is a real opportunity for China, as they can receive UN accreditation in the same way as traditional NGOs. In fact, the term “NGO” is too vague, and there is a lack of official registers to classify and regulate these GONGOs, especially since many classic NGOs also receive state funding. Thus, GONGOs can play a variety of roles, supporting China’s interests in order to promote the government’s agenda, as is often the case during UNHRC sessions.
At the adoption of its UPR during the HRC56th session in July 2024, China showed a strong commitment to improving the well-being of its population, through the fight against poverty, the access to culture and health, and the protection of women, the elderly and the disabled. China was supported by GONGOs, whose discourse was similar: China is working for the development, both social and economic, of its country and the planet, through the protection of the various ethnic groups and crafts of Xinjiang, as well as technological innovations and far-reaching environmental measures.
China seems to be in search of different moral values, which it seeks to disseminate through a model that differs from Western promotion of human rights. Focused on promoting economic and social development, rather than individual freedoms, China’s speeches at the UN are meliorative and philosophical, glorifying the country and the government’s progress.
And yet, alongside this soft power promoting a seemingly perfect Chinese model, the country still has a long way to go when it comes to human rights. As (real) NGOs and Western countries have pointed out, the Chinese government’s treatment of Tibetans, Inner Mongolians and Uighurs is questionable, and despite the “one country, two systems” approach advocated by Beijing, violations and repression in Hong Kong go hand in hand with frequent arbitrary detentions and the denial of fundamental individual freedoms.
China thus promotes an alternative vision of human rights, which seems to resonate with other countries. Unchallenged, and even supported by certain countries, China can count on its membership of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Friends of the UN Charter. They actively denounce the politicization and interference of Western countries in the field of human rights, particularly item 4 of the HRC, which is contested by these groups of countries.
Chloé Bühlmann, Highlight 12/2025: To what extent is China leveraging the Human Rights Council to shape its political goals?, 13 February 2025, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.