Professor Rosemary Foot introduced a multi-authored study, of which she is one of the co-editors, that investigates the extent to which China has become a more powerful actor at the United Nations over the past two to three decades. The study has been published in a Special Issue of Global Policy Vol. 15(S2), May 2024, and is available to view at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17585899/2024/15/S2.

To measure a potential power shift, she and other authors adopted and adapted Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall's four power typologies (see International Organization, 59(1), 2005): that is, compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive power. She stressed that these types of power do not all place overwhelming weight on China's agency but also invite us to consider the ways in which others adjust their behaviour even when China does not use its power overtly and directly.

These typologies were applied across the UN's three pillars of peace and security, development, and human rights. For example, she noted China's increased use of its veto since 2011, and therefore greater anticipation of its possible use as a means to exercise some control before a UN Security Council resolution is tabled. In the development sphere, its position as a "superpower-cum-developing-country" have increased Beijing's influence over evolving definitions of development. With regard to the human rights pillar, Beijing has more energetically promoted its perspective that development should be considered a foundational right on which other rights depend and has successfully introduced resolutions at the Human Rights Council that give more priority to economic, social and cultural rights.

Rosemary Foot also discussed China's comparative levels of funding of UN activities – both in terms of its assessed contributions and voluntary funding – as well as its levels of representation in the UN civil service. In particular, she referenced China as the second largest contributor of the UN's regular budget (in 2025 standing at 20 per cent) and peace operations budget, as well as its low levels of voluntary funding, which nevertheless tend to be highly targeted. She also referenced its relative underrepresentation in the UN's civil service, although it is engaged in efforts to improve that over the longer term (with no guarantee of success). For example, she noted that the number of Chinese interns has more than doubled since 2012-2013 and stood at 773 in 2022-2023 (compared with the USA's 532). China only had 2 Junior Professional Officers at the UN in 2014, but this number has ballooned to 70 in 2022-2023 (second only to Germany's 107).

Overall, Foot concludes on the basis of this multi-authored study that although "Beijing may be in the process of catching up", there is little evidence of any "overwhelming" shift in China's power at the UN. China-related power shifts at the UN over the last two to three decades have been uneven with changes in power being mostly incipient rather than fully realized and with significant differences across issue areas.

Over the longer term, however, we should expect China's power at the UN to increase. Beijing enjoys a unique status as a member of the G-77 developing country grouping as well as membership of the Security Council and this gives it a toolset that Western powers do not have. Given its level of assessed contributions to the UN's regular and peace operations' budgets, many agree that its citizens are under-represented at senior levels of the UN's civil service. Moreover, across the UN system, the G-77's support for China is not only the result of its use of material leverage but also derives from Beijing's focus on policy priorities that these countries consider of major importance.

hosted by Professor Nina Hall


Rosemary Foot is Professor (Emeritus) at the University of Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations, an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a Research Associate at the Oxford China Centre. In 1996, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research interests cover security relations in the Asia-Pacific, human rights, Asian regional institutions, China and regional and world order, and China-US relations. Author or editor/co-editor of 15 books, she has also published over 80 articles and book chapters. Her latest book is entitled China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image (Oxford University Press, 2020) which was selected by Foreign Affairs in their Best of Books list for 2021. For a recent publication of direct relevance to this event please see (co-edited with Sebastian Haug and Max-Otto Baumann), "Power Shifts in International Organisations: China at the United Nations", Special Issue of Global Policy 15,(suppl. 2), May 2024, available open access at onlinelibrary.wiley.com