The United States had a rude awakening when China secured the head job at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It is an important outpost of Chinese influence in the multilateral system and now China seeks to extend its influence there.
In 2019, the Chinese government candidate for director general of the FAO, former vice minister of agriculture Qu Dongyu, won with 108 of a total 191 votes; the French candidate placed second with 71 votes while the US-backed Georgian candidate got 12. In 2023, Qu was re-elected for another four-year term. During the week of December 2, 2024, the FAO Council (its executive body) will meet to discuss Qu’s proposal to extend his term of office to five years, and to make the change retroactive, so that he would remain in charge through 2029, beyond the second Trump administration. Qu also proposes to exercise more direct control over the World Food Program. Qu’s proposal, if adopted by the Council, will be voted on during the FAO Conference biennial meeting in July 2025 by all 194 member states.
Why is this important? First, Chinese appointees in the UN system take direct guidance from Beijing as part of the Chinese public diplomacy operation. Thus, Qu at the FAO, after Russia invaded Ukraine, favored Russia and refused to have the FAO criticize Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s grain exports. He used terms like “special military operation” to describe the invasion.
Second, the FAO is itself important as a repository of agricultural intellectual property and a sponsor of research on land productivity. A priority of the Chinese global investment and espionage strategy is food security, to ensure sufficient supplies for its 1.4 billion population. Thus the largest Chinese investment in the US is Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world; the largest Chinese investment in Israel is the Strauss Group, one of Israel’s largest dairy producers. In 2016, the US arrested a Chinese spy in a cornfield in Iowa trying to get high-priced modified seeds. Seeking to control the FAO can be seen as complementing this strategy.
Third, Qu seeks to expand the FAO’s influence over the World Food Program, a US-led UN organization to which the US provides about half of all the food aid and which has a budget over twice as large as the FAO.
After the 2019 outcome at the FAO, the Trump administration focused on gaining support for its candidates in UN leadership elections, an approach that the Biden administration continued. Thus in 2020, the US-backed Singaporean candidate was elected to be Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization over a Chinese candidate; in 2022, the US candidate defeated a Russian for the top job at the ITU (the International Telecommunications Union).
The timing of the FAO Council meeting in December may allow Qu to get the FAO executive on board this expansion of Chinese influence in the waning days of the Biden Administration.
America has to up its game in the multilateral system.
