(TibetanReview.net, Jan30’24) – Amid allegations that China “gamed” the process, a top Chinese diplomat has said his government would “earnestly study” the 428 recommendations for addressing the human rights situation in the country submitted by UN members during the United Nations Human Rights Council’s fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its record on Jan 23, calling them “objective and balanced,” noted the rfa.org Jan 29.
The report cited leading experts as saying China “gamed” the once-every-five-year UPR to avoid scrutiny of its rights abuses. Its efforts ensured that many contributions during the three-hour review session worked to draw attention away from some of the worst claims of rights abuse by the Chinese Party-state, including the treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kongers.
Chen Xu, China’s ambassador to the UN offices in Geneva, has said, following the adoption of the report, that he was happy with the many recommendations by 141 countries, and that Beijing would release its positions on each of the suggestions next month.
“The report just adopted is, in general, objective and balanced, and has reflected the statements and the recommendations during the meeting,” Chen has said in remarks to the council. “We believe the majority of the comments and recommendations are constructive,”
While this may suggest that China is largely satisfied with the success of its efforts to lobby countries from the Global South to praise its human rights record, analysts and advocates say its charm offensive had a limited effect, noted the voanews.com Jan 29.
A total of 161 of the 193 UN-member countries have spoken and 141 of them have made “recommendations” during the UPR hearing.
“A lot of governments issued friendly recommendations to China during last week’s UPR in Geneva, which demonstrated China’s influence, but despite the enormous pressure that many developing countries feel [from Beijing,] there were some bold statements from Latin American countries,” Raphael Viana David, China and Latin America Programme Manager at the Geneva-based International Service for Human Rights, has told the voanews.com.
The report noted that several Western democracies urged China to ratify international treaties and cease human rights persecutions against ethnic minorities while countries from the Global South were split between those that praised the human rights conditions in China and others that expressed concerns about Beijing’s crackdown on civil society.
For example, Costa Rica has recommended that China “remove excessive restrictions on the functioning of independent NGOs”.
Belarus, on the other hand, Belarus has asked China to “combat separatism and promote modernization of social governance system and capacity in Xizang,” using the term that Beijing has adopted in its official English statement about Tibet.
However, despite Beijing’s efforts to lobby support from developing countries, some expressed mixed views about China’s charm offensive, the report said.
Some countries in the Global South, including some in Africa, found China’s lobbying efforts quite “demeaning,” Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur human rights lawyer who engaged with diplomats from several countries prior to the review, has said.
“They find China’s approach disrespectful to the UN process,” she has said, adding that such sentiment, however, didn’t stop these countries from echoing Beijing’s point of view.
“Before the UPR, China had sent something like instructions to [some of these] countries about what they should say to the other UN member states so that’s why some of them repeated the narrative that Beijing presented.”
China’s efforts to subvert the UPR process also included asking the UN to prevent some activists, whom Beijing characterized as “anti-China separatists,” from attending the review, the report said, citing several media reports.
Besides, Viana David has said the Chinese government also tried to influence media reporting on the UPR in Global South countries and limit access to the review for NGO representatives.
In addition, “China brought a huge delegation and [while] NGO representatives arrived an hour and a half before the review to try to queue to enter the room, their strategy still closed some space for civil society participation in this UPR,” he has said.
Patrick Poon, a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and who had participated in the UN Human Rights Council’s first review of China in 2009, has said last week’s UPR showed that the review isn’t based on independent experts’ assessment of the human rights situation in China.
The UN Human Rights Council’s UPR Working Group adopted the recommendations for China made by UN member states on Jan 26. China has until Feb 9, 2024 to provide its initial written response to each of the recommendations, including whether it accepts them, and has until Feb 16 to finalize its statements and response, noted the rfa.org report.
During the previous UPR in 2018, China accepted 284 of the 346 recommendations made by some 150 countries. But many of those were the ones that were “vague or meaningless, or in fact encouraged the Chinese government to keep committing human rights violations,” Sophie Richardson, the former China director at Human Rights Watch, has told rfa.org.