Concerns Arise Over CCP Support for UN ‘Pact for the Future’

NEW YORK—The United Nations and its member governments, with strong support from the Chinese Communist Party, adopted a landmark agreement last week to bestow the U.N. with more power and influence in global affairs.

Among the key provisions is “transforming global governance” and further empowering international institutions across a range of issues, including “sustainable development and financing for development,” as well as “science, technology and innovation, and digital cooperation.”

The Pact includes a Global Digital Compact to restrict “misinformation” and “disinformation,” and a Declaration on Future Generations that encompasses the 2030 Agenda climate goals that include the phase-out of fossil fuels.

It is also part of transforming the U.N. into what the organization is touting in promotional materials as “U.N. 2.0.”

U.N. leaders and top officials from the CCP, celebrated the Pact as a historic effort to create a better future for humanity and increase global cooperation on international problems.

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“We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said.

Despite opposition from various quarters, the 193-member body adopted the Pact by consensus on Sept. 22 at the Summit for the Future during the U.N. General Assembly after about nine months of negotiations.

In the days before the Pact was adopted, a coalition of U.S. lawmakers and grassroots leaders held a press conference on Capitol Hill criticizing the agreement as an effort to undermine national sovereignty and freedom.

“We can’t give up any more of our sovereignty, any more of our geopolitical integrity, or any more of our economic integrity to foreign actors who have no concerns for the United States of America other than to take our power and money away,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former leader of the House Freedom Caucus.

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times that the Pact ignores the “malign influence of the CCP” within the global organization.

McCaul said that although the pact isn’t legally binding, “this 66-page pact is limitless in scope.”

“It calls for dramatically increased public spending and vague action on countless left-wing priorities,” he said.

“The pact also completely ignores the most urgent issues facing the U.N. today, like reforming UNRWA and combating malign CCP influence,” he said. “It does nothing to advance U.S. interests.”

The CCP, which plays an increasingly powerful role within the U.N., boasted about its significant role in developing the Pact.

Speaking at the U.N. headquarters, Beijing’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the Pact as an effort to “galvanize our collective efforts for world peace and development, and to map out the future of humanity.”

Wang talked about advancing “global governance.”

On the other side, the Argentine government officially distanced itself from the Pact and the U.N. in general.

“Argentina wants the freedom to develop itself, without being subjected to the undue weight of decisions that are alien to our goals,” said Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, adding that Argentinian authorities are pursuing a policy of freedom.

President Javier Milei in his address to the UN General Assembly called the organization. a “multi-tentacled Leviathan that seeks to decide what each nation state should do and how the citizens of the world should live.”

Milei also criticized the global organization’s central role in prescribing what he called “crimes against humanity” in responding to the China-originated coronavirus.

He called the U.N. 2030 Agenda, which features prominently in the Pact, a “supranational program of a socialist nature.”

The new Pact makes repeated commitments to expedite the implementation of the U.N. 2030 Agenda, also known as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

“We will urgently accelerate progress towards achieving the Goals, including through concrete political steps and mobilizing significant additional financing from all sources for sustainable development,” the Pact states.

The Sustainable Development Goals, which U.N. leaders described as the “master plan for humanity” when they were adopted in 2015, encompass everything from education and agriculture to health care and the environment.

After they were adopted, CCP-owned propaganda outlets around the world boasted that Beijing played a “crucial role” in creating the 2030 Agenda.

The U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission has been sounding the alarm for years.

“Since the U.S.–China Commission began tracking officials from the People’s Republic of China serving in leadership positions in international organizations, Beijing’s influence has only grown over key U.N. agencies responsible for funding and policymaking on a wide range of important issues,” the Commission told The Epoch Times.

“Contrary to the International Civil Servant Standards of Conduct, they [Chinese officials] use those positions [in the U.N.] to pursue China’s foreign policy goals,” the Commission said.

Meanwhile, when asked about the concerns of U.S. policymakers and other critics, Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric defended the Pact.

“The Pact for the Future is not about world government,” he said at a press conference. “It is about making an organization of independent, sovereign member states work better.

“It’s not as if anyone is granting the secretary-general authority over governments—clearly not,” Dujarric said, while referencing the U.N. Charter.

Still, Dujarric said, it is important to increase global cooperation because, “not one country can deal with the rising seas, not one country can deal with global pandemics, not one country can deal with international terrorism.”

“This is about bringing sovereign, independent countries, and working together,” he said, urging people to read original documents to become well informed and “make up their own minds.”

The strengthening of the U.N. and in particular, efforts to have the U.N. secretary-general lead the response to emergencies, received special attention from opponents.

As The Epoch Times reported in April of last year, empowering the U.N. as the central force in dealing with international emergencies and “complex global shocks” was a key goal heading into the Summit of the Future.

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Kevin Moley, who oversaw U.S. relations with the U.N. during the previous administration, warned of the dangers.

“Allowing the U.N. to deal with this is the equivalent of putting the CCP in charge of global emergencies,” Moley told The Epoch Times. He warned that the CCP takeover of international organizations represents a potentially mortal threat to the West.

Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told The Epoch Times that Americans must resist what he described as a “power grab” of historic proportions.

“The U.N. secretary-general has arrogated to himself dictatorial powers … upon his mere proclamation of an ‘emergency,’ as defined by himself,” Boyle said.

Boyle, who wrote the implementing U.S. legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention and serves on the board of Amnesty International, said that because of the involvement of heads of state and government in the process, the new U.N. Pact could constitute a “treaty” with “legal obligations” under both domestic and international law.

“This totalitarian arrangement constitutes a grave and immediate threat to the sovereignty and independence of all United Nations member states,” he said.

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