Globalization is an ongoing reality. Governments today are expanding their diplomatic relations and exchanges, while the public’s daily lives are also becoming increasingly closely tied up to the international community. From finance, business, health, food, daily supplies, mail and telecommunication services, medicine, transportation, tourism, weather, education, culture and art to entertainment, almost every aspect of daily life involves at least something that is connected to other nations.
Nowadays, irrespective of what a person does or where they work, it is absolutely essential to have a global vision. Compared with the time when the League of Nations — the UN’s predecessor — was founded after World War I, the UN now has more than three times as many members and more than 20 specialized agencies.
These agencies all aim to manage important aspects of life from the perspective of the global community. Employees at the agencies are “international public servants” recruited from around the world. The leaders of the organizations, with titles such as president, secretary-general or managing director, are usually people who do not come from the UN Security Council’s five permanent member countries to avoid criticism that these countries dominate the organization.
However, China has been an exception to this rule, with Chinese having an especially high chance of getting recruited to those agencies — either as staff members or as leaders. This is because China has been actively placing its citizens in intergovernmental organizations by capitalizing on its history as a “war victim” to gain sympathy from other countries, especially Japan. This is now becoming a source of problems.
International public servants should be serving the interests of the international community, not the interests of their home countries. This is part of their fundamental responsibility and professional ethics. Whenever they encounter matters that concern their own country, they should remove themselves from the process to avoid conflicts of interest, which is a common principle in today’s international society.
While the Statute of the International Court of Justice clearly stipulates that conflicts of interest should be avoided, other intergovernmental organizations do not have the same rule — apparently because this is considered common sense and not worth emphasizing. Nonetheless, the idea of avoidance of conflicts of interest seems to be nonexistent in Chinese culture.
In recent years, Chinese-American engineers working at high-tech companies have been arrested on charges of espionage after they were found to have leaked confidential information concerning issues of US national security to the Chinese government. Many Chinese working at intergovernmental organizations are highly nationalistic and they will not refrain from bending the rules or even contradicting the organization’s goals to serve the interests of China.
They exploit their official capacity to be able to promote China’s policies and show their allegiance to the country. The way that Chinese officials at the WHO, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Criminal Police Organization have tried to make the organizations at which they work adhere to Beijing’s policy on Taiwan are all clear examples of a flagrant disregard for conflicts of interest.
As China quietly gains control of more intergovernmental organizations, the world could well wake up one day to find that Beijing is dominating almost all of the organizations around the world. Should that happen, what will become of the international community and international relations?
Peng Ming-min is a former presidential adviser.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
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