China Deploys ‘Growing Army’ of Pro-Beijing NGOs to UN to Target Critics, Report Says

‘China has sought greater influence within the U.N. human rights system and become more aggressive in silencing dissent,’ an investigative report says.

The opening session of the 38th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 18, 2018. Alain Grosclaude/AFP/Getty Images

The Chinese regime is increasingly sending groups that pose as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the United Nations in an effort to suppress criticism of its human rights record, according to a report published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on April 28.

The 10-month investigation, a partnership between the ICIJ and 42 media organizations, examined China’s transnational repression under Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Part of the report focused on the communist regime’s subversion campaign against the U.N. Human Rights Council through “a growing army of Chinese NGOs.”

“Since Xi’s reelection as Communist Party general secretary in 2017 and president the following year, China has sought greater influence within the U.N. human rights system and become more aggressive in silencing dissent,” the report reads.

ICIJ found that the number of Chinese NGOs holding consultative status with the U.N. has nearly doubled since 2018.

NGOs can participate in U.N. meetings, make oral statements, and submit written statements before U.N. sessions after obtaining consultative status, which is granted by the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

An ICIJ analysis of 106 NGOs from China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan found that 59 are not independent but are “closely connected” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The ICIJ referred to these Beijing-backed NGOs as “GONGOs” or “government-organized nongovernmental organizations.”

Ten of these GONGOs receive more than 50 percent of their funding from Beijing, the ICIJ noted.

In at least 46 of these groups, directors, secretaries, vice presidents, or other high-ranking staff also hold positions in the Chinese regime’s departments or within the CCP.

Additionally, 53 of these NGOs pledge loyalty to the CCP on their websites or in other official documents. Among them, 12 agree to defer their decision-making to the Party, such as leadership appointments.

“In 2024, 33 Chinese NGOs showed up about 300 times on the lists of speakers at Human Rights Council sessions. There were only three of them in 2018. None criticized China,” the report reads.

Rana Siu Inboden, senior fellow at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, was quoted in the report as saying that Beijing “is clearly using NGOs as a tool.”

“They are encouraging them, helping them, guiding them, coaching them through how to get this [consultative] status,” Inboden said. “And then once they’re [at the U.N.], you can see how their statements, whether it’s in the Human Rights Council or elsewhere, serve the government.”

China’s Tactics

Delegates from the Beijing-backed groups seek to “disrupt and drown out” criticism of China, heap praise on the CCP, and monitor and intimidate those who come to Geneva to testify against China.

“It’s corrosive. It’s dishonest. It’s subversive,” Michèle Taylor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council from February 2022 to January this year, was quoted as saying in the ICIJ’s findings.

Beijing-backed groups “are masquerading as NGOs” as part of a broader effort by the CCP “to obfuscate their own human rights violations and reshape the narrative around China’s actions and culpabilities,” Taylor said.

The ICIJ and its media partners spoke to 15 activists and lawyers dedicated to China’s human rights who “described being surveilled or harassed by people suspected to be proxies for the Chinese government,” according to the report. These incidents happened both inside the United Nations and in Geneva at large.

Some activists said that their relatives, whom they believed were pressured by Chinese authorities, had urged them to cease their public activism or cautioned them about the risks of their actions, according to the ICIJ.

The report cites an incident in March 2024, when some rights activists refused to set foot inside the U.N. buildings, out of fear that Beijing’s presence could result in retribution against their families in China.

“Instead, they gathered for a secret meeting on the top floor of a nondescript office building nearby. They were there to discuss human rights abuses in China and Hong Kong with the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk,” the ICIJ said.

In January last year, China was among several countries that underwent a peer review process called the “Universal Periodic Review” before the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Rushan Abbas, cofounder of the U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs, told ICIJ that after she and other NGO delegates entered the U.N. building where China’s review was being held, “those Chinese GONGOs were taking pictures of us.”

“I did not report [this] to the U.N. authorities because I lost faith in them, as China was acting ... like the U.N. was its playground,” Abbas was quoted as saying in the report.

The ICIJ said that independent organizations now have a greater responsibility to speak out about atrocities due to the rise of autocracy around the world.

“If China’s power continues to go unchecked by U.N. authorities, it threatens the credibility of the institution in its efforts to monitor and document violations and abuses not just in China, but all over the world,” the group said.