China’s UNESCO Influence Grows as Trump Withdraws US from Agency

Chi­na’s influ­ence on UNESCO  has sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ed as Pres­i­dent Trump’s deci­sion to with­draw the Unit­ed States from the cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tion removes a pow­er­ful check on Bei­jing’s efforts to shape edu­ca­tion­al cur­ric­u­la, his­tor­i­cal des­ig­na­tions, and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence guide­lines. On 23 July 2025, The New York Times report­ed that Chi­na is poised to become UNESCO’s biggest fun­der while lever­ag­ing the agency to advance Xi Jin­ping’s Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive and Glob­al Civ­i­liza­tion Ini­tia­tive, with a Chi­nese offi­cial now serv­ing as deputy direc­tor gen­er­al. The arti­cle begins:

Any trav­el­er who has picked up an inter­na­tion­al guide­book knows the UNESCO des­ig­na­tion as short­hand for a must-see cul­tur­al des­ti­na­tion that’s wor­thy of a detour. But the Unit­ed Nations Edu­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Orga­ni­za­tion has also become the tar­get of an intense Chi­nese influ­ence cam­paign in recent years as Bei­jing has sought to increase its reach over edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lums, his­tor­i­cal des­ig­na­tions and even arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Pres­i­dent Trump’s deci­sion Tues­day to with­draw the Unit­ed States from the group removes a pow­er­ful check on Chi­na’s effort, in the lat­est exam­ple of how the White House retreat from inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions offers an open­ing for Chi­na to advance its soft power.

          Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/world/asia/unesco-china-us.html

Key Points

• The Unit­ed States was UNESCO’s largest backer at near­ly 25% of fund­ing, but Chi­na has stepped up to fill the void as Wash­ing­ton repeat­ed­ly with­draws from the organization
• Bei­jing lob­bies heav­i­ly for World Her­itage des­ig­na­tions in oppressed regions like Tibet and Xin­jiang, where local res­i­dents view them as cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion and con­trol attempts
• UNESCO has coop­er­a­tion agree­ments with the Chi­nese AI com­pa­ny iFly­tek for high­er edu­ca­tion in Asia and Africa, while the agency sets glob­al arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence guidelines
• A Uyghur lin­guist’s UNESCO con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tion was abrupt­ly can­celed after he crit­i­cized Chi­na, with orga­niz­ers fear­ing they would offend Chi­nese spon­sor Talk­mate executives

Beijing’s Global Influence: The Strategic Use of Culture

Bei­jing uses cul­tur­al out­reach as a sophis­ti­cat­ed dual-pur­pose tool, aim­ing to both attract for­eign audi­ences and exert coer­cive con­trol over nar­ra­tives about Chi­na. This strat­e­gy heav­i­ly relies on edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al plat­forms, such as Con­fu­cius Insti­tutes, which have prompt­ed West­ern gov­ern­ments to reassess aca­d­e­m­ic part­ner­ships with Chi­na due to con­cerns over intel­lec­tu­al free­dom and polit­i­cal com­pli­ance. While not always direct­ly con­trolled by the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty, these cul­tur­al pro­grams fos­ter an envi­ron­ment of self-cen­sor­ship and ide­o­log­i­cal align­ment, with instruc­tors often demon­strat­ing a high degree of polit­i­cal con­for­mi­ty.

The approach also extends into the dig­i­tal realm, where state-spon­sored cam­paigns uti­lize social media influ­encers to dis­sem­i­nate cul­tur­al­ly-focused con­tent designed to project a benign image and counter crit­i­cism on the world stage. These actions rep­re­sent a strate­gic fusion of soft pow­er appeal with sharp pow­er tac­tics, lever­ag­ing cul­tur­al prod­ucts and insti­tu­tions to infil­trate soci­eties and penal­ize dis­sent.

Exter­nal References:

1. Explor­ing Chi­na’s Soft Pow­er: Man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Chi­nese Dream in Cul­tur­al Diplomacy

2. The Cul­tur­al Soft Pow­er of Chi­na: A Tool for Dual­is­tic Nation­al Security

3. The Lim­its of Chi­na’s Soft pow­er in Europe

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.