Maurice Newman: China has been shown up as the WHO’s master manipulator

It is time to stop calling out those who are aware of China’s obvious manipulation of the World Health Organization as part of the tinfoil hat brigade, writes Maurice Newman.

To say that the United Nations and its agencies have been captured by Beijing is to risk being labelled a conspiracy theorist and invite offers of tinfoil hats.

Yet the evidence keeps piling up.

The latest example is revealed in an independent investigation which finds World Bank leaders, including then-chief executive Kristalina Georgieva, applied “undue pressure” on staff to boost China’s position in the bank’s Doing Business 2018 report.

It says they sought to “make specific changes to China’s data points” to boost its ranking at a time when the bank was seeking Beijing’s participation in a capital raising.

After changes to data methodology were made, China was lifted seven places.

World Health Organization boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has sided with China during a lot of the Covid crisis. Picture: AFP

But when it comes to Beijing’s sinister reach, nothing matches its capture of the World Health Organisation and its executive ­director Dr Tedros Adhanom ­Ghebreyesus.

Even though he must have known China was underreporting Covid ­infections at the outset of the pandemic, Tedros sided with Beijing.

According to the journal Science, 86 per cent of Wuhan cases were undocumented before travel restrictions were put in place. Repeatedly, Tedros quoted directly from Chinese government statements which were in turn misinforming their own public.

As the virus raged around the world, Tedros warned against ­imposing travel or trade restrictions on China. He pushed the term Covid-19 “to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatising”.

Tedros heaped praise on Chinese transparency and spoke of Beijing “setting a new standard for outbreak control”.

People wear masks while walking along a street in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Picture: Getty Images

“China has bought the world time … China’s speed, China’s scale and China’s efficiency … is the advantage of China’s system,” he gushed.

Families mourning the loss of nearly five million loved ones who have died from Covid would disagree.

Under sufferance, Beijing permitted an investigation into the source of the pandemic but insisted the WHO conduct it and oversaw the selection of investigators.

According to investigative journalist Sharri Markson, some were so conflicted by their close connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that they should have been automatically disqualified.

Nearly half the probe’s permitted four weeks were spent in quarantine. Time at the Wuhan Institute, the key area of interest, was restricted to around three hours with access to crucial data denied.

On a show of hands, the report predictably concluded it was extremely unlikely Covid came from a laboratory.

That’s the advantage of the Chinese system.

On climate change policy, China is on a different planet. It may emit more greenhouse gases than the developed world put together, have the world’s second-biggest economy, the most billionaires, the largest standing army and a Mars landing to its credit, but it identifies as “developing” and so is excused all sins.

Still, as it constructs 43 new coal fired power stations and 18 new blast furnaces, Beijing promises to be “net zero” by 2060, a pledge which has zero credibility.

Come the Glasgow climate conference, even more extravagant undertakings can be expected. However, these will be Beijing gaming the system, not serious commitments to climate change.

Yet Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate supremo, tells the world: “China, is the country that’s doing it right when it comes to addressing global warming.”

On trade, it’s the same story. China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation was based on fundamentally naive expectations. From the moment it joined in 2001, Beijing has gamed the system.

It prosecutes a state-led, non-market, mercantilist approach and regularly fails to comply with the Protocol of Accession.

United Nations climate change boss Christiana Figueres says China is doing the right things on climate. Picture: AAP Image

When it comes to transparency and uniform application of the law, Chinese trade policy is opaque.

Beijing also pays no respect to intellectual property rights with China’s theft of US IP estimated to be worth around $600 billion a year.

Despite its appalling human rights record, China was re-elected to the Human Rights Council in 2020. It immediately made its intentions clear.

When a UN report accused Beijing of cultural discrimination, its delegation exploded, criticising the rapporteur for “racist statements”.

It now works tirelessly to ensure human rights activists are denied a UN platform.

Currently, Beijing heads four of the 15 UN specialised agencies compared to Washington’s two.

Its position on the Food and Agriculture Organisation was negotiated by shamelessly slashing $100 million from Cameroon’s national debt.

Coincidentally, Cameroon’s nominated candidate promptly withdrew.

China has bullied the UN to say that the Great Barrier Reef is in danger.

To punish Australia, with whom it has 14 ongoing “grievances”, a vindictive Beijing has funded activists to bully the World Heritage Committee, UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation for Nature to have the Great Barrier Reef listed as “in danger”.

A decision has been deferred, but 64,000 Australian jobs and $6.4 billion in tourism revenue remain at stake.

The Chinese UN strategy has been patient and targeted. It has assiduously cultivated a reliable voting block.

This includes victims of its debt trap diplomacy, those who have been effectively colonised by its Belt and Road Initiative and many like-­minded despots who applaud China’s push to have human rights abuse universally accepted as a “cultural norm”.

To claim that Beijing’s United Nations domination is a right-wing conspiracy is to distract from reality. The wonder is it has been achieved on a mere 12 per cent contribution to the regular UN budget.

With Western democracies contributing far more than 50 per cent of the total, it’s surely time for those paying the piper to call the tune.