During the past several years, the PRC has aggressively promoted its view that the “right to development” transcends all other rights, while at the same time selling its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as the answer to the UN’s ambitious and cash-strapped 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.1 With the assistance of PRC nationals working at the UN, Chinese Communist Party-linked “NGOs” with consultative status at the UN, bribery, influence, and more,2 China made substantial headway convincing key UN officials and a number of diplomats that the BRI was closely aligned with the 2030 Agenda, and that their “synergies” charted a path forward to achieving the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recently, however, the BRI has encountered pushback, not just in some of the countries along the Belt and Road whose troubles have been covered widely in the international media, but also at the UN.
