Picture Chinese President Xi Jinping at Moscow’s Victory Day parade: the guest of honour, smirking beside Putin.
That happened last Friday. And it was no mere ceremony: it was a gauntlet thrown down at the West’s feet.
By obsessing over isolating Russia, we elevate China to the role of global chessmaster, a superpower set to challenge Europe and America in markets, tech, and battlefields. And where we really hand China the chessboard is at the UN.
Beijing’s strategy is surgical. From the UN’s Human Rights Council to the Economic and Social Council, China is orchestrating a takeover, not just with its diplomats, but through NGOs posing as independent voices.
These are not earnest activists, but CCP puppets. Often they are tied to state-backed think tanks, ones with opaque funding and an admirable ability to secure UN consultative status faster than you can say “Uyghur genocide”.
These groups swamp UN processes with reports praising China’s “progress” in Tibet or “stability” in Xinjiang. It is narrative warfare, won by sheer volume. Meanwhile, authentic NGOs–those bold enough to expose Beijing’s abuses–drown in red tape.
Europe, with its commitment to free expression, should be showing some sensitivity. Instead, our diplomats sip espressos with them in Geneva and enjoy cocktails together in New York.
It gets nastier. These NGOs do not just speak. They intimidate. Tibetan activists, Uyghur advocates, Hong Kong democrats, and Falun Gong members are heckled, smeared, photographed, even physically barred at UN events.
This is not advocacy. It is state-sponsored bullying, draped in the UN’s sanctimonious neutrality. And while we sever ties with Russia, China’s NGOs are silencing dissent in plain view, eroding the very civic freedoms Europe claims to uphold.
The UN is meant to be a neutral arena, but its open-door policy swings open the gates for Beijing’s trojan horse. Its system cannot–or will not–distinguish genuine NGOs from CCP fronts, so the boundary between government and grassroots fades, and the West’s ideal of transparent advocacy gets crushed. By focusing elsewhere, such as on Moscow, we ignore the dragon coiling around us.
Beijing rewrites the global playbook. Its NGOs push a distorted vision of human rights, washing up the face of mass surveillance and repression. They frame criticism of Xinjiang’s camps or the suffocation of Hong Kong’s democracy as assaults on sovereignty, echoing Xi’s “community of shared future for mankind”–a glossy-magazine term for authoritarianism. With Chinese nationals now leading UN agencies, this narrative takes roots into the very system, incidentally increasingly muting Europe’s voice.
This strikes Europe where it hurts. Our continent, already wrestling with energy woes, migration, and Russia’s shadow, now faces a stealthier foe: a China that is not just flooding our markets, but infiltrating the institutions we forged.
The UN rose from Europe’s war-torn ashes, grounded in liberal ideals. Now, it is being reshaped to legitimise Beijing’s values, undermining the EU’s ability to champion democracy or hold despots accountable. We let China erode our global clout, leaving Europe a bystander in a world it helped define.
Why the paralysis? The UN’s consensus-driven machinery is no match for China’s exhaustingly meticulous campaign. Too many European states, tied to Chinese trade or infrastructure deals–here, think Greece’s ports or Hungary’s railways–are unwilling to provoke Beijing.
Even when the CCP links of NGOs are exposed, the burden of proof falls on whistleblowers, not the culprits. It is a rigged game, and Europe is flat out of aces.
This is soft power with claws, and it barely makes headlines. While we debate the fate of Ukraine or Nord Stream, Beijing conquers the UN through bureaucracy. This is institutional hijacking and it works precisely because we can’t be bothered to deal with it.
Europe must wake up. We need rigorous scrutiny of NGO funding, stricter UN accreditation rules, and a coalition of democracies to counter China’s advance.
Xi’s Moscow appearance should act as a wake-up call. By sidelining Russia, we do not just isolate one rival. We clear the path for China to become the West’s true nemesis–a superpower contesting us on every front, from ideas to arms. The UN is its testing ground, and its NGO legion paves the way.
If Europe does not act, we will wake to a world where Beijing, not Brussels or Washington, sets the terms.
And that is a world we will regret.
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