Renewing multilateralism: China and UN in the 21st century

The United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758, restoring the lawful seat of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations, on Oct 25, 1971. In doing so, it restored one-fourth of humanity to the world’s foremost multilateral institution, making the UN whole. Fifty-five years on, that decision endures as a defining milestone in the evolution of the international order.

The anniversary arrives at a sobering moment. Armed conflicts grind on across several regions, geopolitical rivalry is growing, trust among major powers has frayed, and humanity faces a convergence of challenges — climate change, pandemics, food insecurity, technological disruption and widening inequality — that no border can contain.

Seen across the span of 55 years, the story of China and the UN is one of remarkable evolution. A country that reentered the organization cautiously in 1971 has become one of its central pillars. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China is today the second-largest contributor to both the regular and the peacekeeping budgets of the United Nations. Among the Council’s permanent members it deploys the most peacekeepers, with more than 50,000 Chinese personnel having served under the blue helmet from Africa to the Middle East. Some have given their lives for international peace and security.

What began as a restored seat has grown into sustained engagement across the UN’s agencies — on public health and pandemic response, climate and biodiversity, agriculture and food security, digital cooperation and humanitarian relief. Through South-South cooperation, the Global Development Initiative and expanding partnerships, China increasingly shares its experience, technology and resources in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Multilateral cooperation is a vaccine reaching a remote village before an outbreak spreads. It is former child soldiers trading rifles for schoolbooks. It is a farmer planting a drought-resistant seed, or a family receiving shelter in the hours after catastrophe.

Such outcomes are possible only when governments, organizations and communities act through institutions that command global legitimacy.

Serving as UN resident coordinator in China gave me a rare vantage point from which to view China’s partnership with the UN. What struck me was not merely the scale of China’s engagement but its readiness to work through multilateral channels on challenges reaching beyond its borders. When the global health crisis tested every health system on Earth, I watched China reach out to many nations at once, delivering vaccines and sharing clinical experience and non-pharmaceutical interventions with countries across the Global South. The most consequential moments seldom made headlines. They took the form of patient collaboration — between Chinese ministries, UN agencies and international partners — to strengthen health systems, advance the green transition and modernize agriculture.

When catastrophic floods inundated Pakistan in 2022, I launched an emergency appeal from Beijing alongside Pakistan’s then ambassador to China. China was among the first countries to respond with timely assistance, supporting both immediate relief and longer-term recovery.

Similarly, after the earthquake that devastated Myanmar in 2025, the Chinese government, together with the UN in China, quickly mobilized emergency humanitarian assistance and relief for those affected.

Such actions epitomize China’s increasing global engagement, which extends beyond economic development to encompass humanitarian solidarity. They also reflect China’s commitment to South-South cooperation and its willingness to work through the UN to address global challenges. Effective multilateralism rests not on rhetoric but on the discipline of showing up, again and again.

Every great test facing humanity is a shared one. No nation, however powerful, can halt a pandemic, stabilize the climate, govern emerging technologies or deliver the Sustainable Development Goals on its own. That truth does not render the UN less relevant; it makes it indispensable.

As is dialogue. In the end, every conflict arrives at a negotiating table. The only question is how much suffering precedes it. To press for political solutions is not weakness but the highest form of strategic wisdom.

Nowhere was this clearer than in Beijing in March 2023, when China helped Saudi Arabia and Iran restore diplomatic relations after seven years of rupture — an agreement to reopen embassies and revive dialogue between two rivals whose estrangement had fueled conflicts across the Middle East. Few had anticipated a breakthrough; fewer still had expected it to be brokered in the Chinese capital. Such efforts reflect a principle woven into the very fabric of the UN Charter — that durable peace is never imposed by force, but built through diplomacy, mutual respect and perseverance.

Fifty-five years after Resolution 2758, the question before us is no longer one of representation but of responsibility. The true measure of leadership lies not in the power to shape events alone, but in the willingness to strengthen the institutions through which all nations may shape them together.

Our shared future depends not on retreating from multilateralism but on renewing it — with confidence, with courage and with common purpose. In an age of fracture, that remains humanity’s surest hope.

The author served for nearly three decades with the United Nations, most recently as UN resident coordinator in China (2021-26).

He is currently CEO of Global Neighbours, a Vienna-based think tank, and a distinguished visiting professor at Tsinghua University.

The views don’t necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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