GMF Research Reveals PRC Pressure on UN Personnel, Think Tanks

WASHINGTON – On March 24, 2022, the German Marshall Fund published a report entitled “The Distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to Limit Taiwan’s Access to the United Nations.” The report details the People’s Republic of China’s campaign to promote the falsehood that UN Security Council Resolution 2758 -- the resolution which granted the UN seat previously occupied by the Republic of China (Taiwan) in the UN General Assembly and the Security Council to the PRC in 1971 – was an acceptance by UN member states that Taiwan is a part of the PRC.

The research uncovered previously unpublished instances of pressure tactics by the PRC to force subtle but important revisions in historical UN documents by UN personnel, such as changing “Taiwan” to “Taiwan, province of China” to accommodate Beijing’s preferences. We also discovered cases of the PRC pressuring US-based think tanks to alter the language on their websites related to Taiwan or the PRC threatened to block their participation as observers to important international conferences.  In one case study, the PRC threatened to impede two US think tanks participation in the review of the implementation of the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and its 2005 Amendment, the main international legal instruments in the area of nuclear security adopted under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a critical topic of their research.

GMF believes it is vital to publicize the nature and outcomes of these PRC pressure tactics so that organizations are better able to resist these types of tactics in the future and feel more confident in publicizing this coercive tactics as they occur. 

GMF believes it is vital to publicize the nature and outcomes of these PRC pressure tactics so that organizations are better able to resist these types of tactics in the future and feel more confident in publicizing this coercive tactics as they occur. We particularly strongly oppose the PRC’s effort to threaten independent research institutions, think tanks and other NGOs to accede to Chinese preferences or lose access to the UN and its affiliated agencies, which are essential to their work. The ability to conduct independent research in the United States, without being subjected to coercion and threats from the PRC, must be inviolable.

The report is available on GMF’s website here. The findings were first published in The New York Times on March 24, 2022.