China, AI and a say on world order: Why the US rejoined UNESCO

After five long years of absence, the United States formally rejoined the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Friday, June 30. The US claims it needs a place back at the table, where China has had plenty of time to exert its influence on some of the most hot-button issues of our time, including education and the future of artificial intelligence (AI).

This article originally appeared on June 15. It was republished and updated on Friday June 30, on the occasion of Unesco’s special general conference on the reintegration of the United States into the organisation.

The American readmission application capped a long list of promises made by US President Joe Biden to reverse his predecessor Donald Trump’s crusade against a string of international bodies he did not feel the US needed to be a part of, including the Paris Climate Agreement and the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The decision and initial request by the US to rejoin UNESCO was met with resounding applause at its headquarters in Paris, where Director-General Audrey Azoulay described it as an “historic moment” and “an important day for multilateralism”.

“What’s happened over the last years meant that UNESCO matters,” she said. “And when you’re absent from that … you lose something. You lose something for your influence in the world, but also for your own national interest.”

The US pulled out of UNESCO after a long-running dispute over the organisation’s decision to admit Palestine as a member in 2011, thereby giving it de facto recognition as a state. The move drew anger from the US and its close ally Israel, and forced Barack Obama’s administration to stop its funding of the agency because it was barred by US law to do so at the time. In 2017, Trump announced his country would leave UNESCO altogether, accusing it of anti-Israel bias. It officially left in 2018.

But when the US – which prior to the Palestine issue had been the largest contributor, accounting for around 22 percent of its yearly budget – withdrew altogether, it left a vacuum that China has since been more than happy to fill.

Ashok Swain, a professor in Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden, said, “China has made sure to be there”, pointing to the fact that “even the garden at UNESCO’s headquarters has been co-funded by a Chinese city”.

UNESCO’s budget is split into two parts, in which one consists of obligatory contributions from member states and the other of voluntary funding. After the US departure, China did indeed become the largest funder of the compulsory part, but not of the voluntary budget.

‘Trying to shape UNESCO’s agenda’

Meanwhile, the US, which now sees China as its biggest threat, has been watching more or less blindly on the sidelines as Beijing exerts its influence through some of UNESCO’s soft-power vehicles, including the World Heritage Committee.

Although the seemingly inoffensive committee is best known for designating and protecting cultural landmarks, Swain said it actually plays a very important role. “It has a huge impact on tourism and economics, and can cause controversy when designating [landmarks in] controversial or disputed areas,” he said. He cited as an example the body’s 2018 decision to recognise the old city of Hebron in the West Bank as a Palestinian World Heritage Site, which unsurprisingly sparked outrage from Israel.

“And when China was chair between 2021 and 2022, the commission recommended the Great Barrier Reef in Australia should be placed on the on the ‘in danger’ list,” he said, noting Sydney had loudly protested the move, saying it risked costing the country thousands of jobs and leave a huge dent in its all-important tourism revenues.

“When you chair you have a strong command on which sites should be declared heritage sites or not,” Swain said.

In a 2021 opinion piece published by the Washington DC-based media outlet The Hill, John Brian Atwood, an American diplomat and a former administrator of the US Agency for International Development, warned that countries like China and Russia “are actively engaged in trying to shape UNESCO’s agenda”.

Atwood pointed to Beijing’s efforts to move UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education to Shanghai, and have the agency sign a cooperation agreement with its massive Belt and Road initiative – a project that is aimed to stretch around the globe, which some analysts fear could significantly expand China’s power. 

Atwood also highlighted Russia’s efforts to try to expel UNESCO from Crimea prior to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “Its last attempt to scuttle this program lost by only a few votes and America’s allies were left alone to defend the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine,” he wrote.

AI and its impact on world order

In March of this year, as the Biden administration worked on a US return to UNESCO, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Congress to agree to $150 million to rejoin the organisation, articulating some of the most urgent reasons why the US needed to rejoin. Not the least being because in November it had adopted the first global standard on the ethics of AI.

“I very much believe we should be back in UNESCO again, not as a gift to UNESCO, but because things that are happening at UNESCO actually matter,” Blinken said.

“They are working on rules, norms and standards for artificial intelligence. We want to be there,” he said.

“China right now is the single largest contributor to UNESCO. That carries a lot of weight. We’re not even at the table.”

Swain said that although UNESCO’s policy papers are merely advisory, they still carry a huge importance ideologically.

“UNESCO plays a subtle, but very important role in setting the world’s education and culture,” he explained.

In the case of AI, he said the danger the US might be facing is the fact that China “has a very different take on issues like democracy and human rights”.

“The US ideological interest, and its commitment to it, will be challenged if China takes overall control on how to formulate the rules and regulations of AI. I think that makes a solid case for the US to be worried about.”

In short, it boils down to having a say on world order.

“When the world is getting divided into two ideological camps, the rules that are set in UNESCO matter,” Swain said.

The US reapplication made no mention of the status of Palestine, but in its readmission letter, the US said it had taken note of UNESCO’s “focus on decreasing politicized debate, especially on Middle East issues”. 

In its bid to make it back into the fold, the US has agreed to pay UNESCO more than $600 million in back dues. Its reentry will also need to pass a vote by the agency’s 193 members, which is expected to take place in July.

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