Competition and Coexistence of Powers in the “Three UNs”: A Framework Analyzing China’s Evolving Engagement with UNESCO

Power is the central concept of international relations and international politics. To categorize the various ways of thinking about power, there is a valuable taxonomy of four types of power, namely compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive. This understanding of power provides a framework to analyze China’s evolving engagement with UNESCO. UNESCO is the world’s largest intellectual platform and a controversial international organization. China has the peculiarity of a dual identity as a developing country on one hand and a major power and UNESCO’s largest contributor on the other. Therefore, power relations are more noticeable in China’s interaction with UNESCO. First, under UNESCO’s constitution, UNESCO’s compulsory power is mainly expressed in its independent budgetary power, that is dependent on large countries for contributions but equal in decision-making to large and small countries, making China, the largest contributor, a fragile power. Second, China’s institutional power is expressed though the General Conference proposals. Though China has been more actively participating in UNESCO affairs in the last decade, the number of proposals from China has been declining, while the wide groups of civil society in China has become more passionate as an institutionalized partner with UNESCO, which shows a shift of institutional power from the government to the society. Third, in terms of structural power, China has gradually abandoned the traditional developed–development, donor–recipient structural power and reshaped the bloc diplomacy based on country’s interests at UNESCO. Finally, UNESCO is one of the most influential knowledge-producing institutions in the world, hence China’s role is more of implementation of UNESCO’s norms and agendas, making China a subordinate of UNESCO’s productive power. Concerning future research, the interactive analytical framework of power could also be applied to analyze China’s interactions with other international organizations and observe the changes caused by Chinese influence on them.