U.N. Aid Chief Praises China’s Green ‘Leadership’ in Fawning Interview

The United Nations's humanitarian aid chief gushed about the Chinese regime's "leadership" on climate change and the Belt and Road Initiative's effects on the developing world during his recent trip to the country.

Tom Fletcher, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, met with Chinese officials during a week-long trip to the country at the end of April. Fletcher's goal appeared to be to convince China's government to donate to his organization's humanitarian response efforts, as the Trump administration makes cuts to its U.N. contributions that it views as wasteful or damaging to U.S. interests.

In a blog post about his trip on Sunday, Fletcher wrote that "the future of the humanitarian system was the key topic." Fletcher, a longtime U.K. diplomat who has served as foreign policy advisor to multiple prime ministers, also said that "Chinese Ministers stressed that they want to be a reliable and long-term partner."

But China's contributions to the U.N. system traditionally target agencies over which Beijing can exert the most control for its political purposes, rather than humanitarian assistance-focused programs such as the World Food Programme and UNICEF. Its U.N. contributions are significantly lower than U.S. funding for the organization, and it traditionally directs its funding to trust funds that it controls jointly with the U.N., rather than to generalized humanitarian programs.

Nevertheless, Fletcher called for a "humanitarian reset" in an interview with Xinhua News Agency, a propaganda outlet controlled by the Chinese government, and argued that Chinese artificial intelligence could be used around the world to combat climate change.

"China is already using artificial intelligence to anticipate future climate shocks here in China. I believe we can use that work and in partnership to predict those climate shocks globally," he told Xinhua.

He called projects under China's Belt and Road Initiative for global infrastructure development "impressive," highlighting Chinese-developed roads in Kenya.

Seeing how Beijing's air quality has improved in recent decades has inspired Fletcher to "think about how we can make the humanitarian movement more green, how can we look to China for leadership about how we bring more renewable energy, solar panels, wind power, in the humanitarian supply chains."

Fletcher also appeared to take a swipe at President Trump in the interview: "I didn't stop believing in climate change just because of the results of a few elections recently."

During the trip, he met with several Chinese government agencies, including the Chinese ministries of foreign affairs and commerce.

The U.N. official signed a letter of intent between his office and China's Meteorological Administration, according to the Chinese agency's summary of his meeting with CMA administrator Chen Zhenlin. During his visit to the agency, Fletcher learned about the Fengyun meteorological satellite system.

In a post to X, he summarized his meeting with Li Chenggang, the vice minister of commerce who is serving as China's international trade negotiator. "We discussed potential partnership on scaled up disaster relief, green humanitarian reset, global solidarity, and a stable international system underpinned by humanitarian law."