Adversary Intelligence — 2026-07-24

US Lawmakers Accuse China of Using UN Peacekeeping Forces for Intelligence Collection in Strategic Regions

BLUFWashington's bid to downsize UNMISS will stall absent a concrete draft resolution, because China holds both a P5 veto and direct energy interests in South Sudan that make voluntary drawdown unlikely.

Republican Representative Sheri Biggs told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that China's UN peacekeeping deployments are "concentrated in strategically sensitive regions," including Belt and Road corridors, ports, mineral resources, and existing or potential basing locations 1. US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz, testifying at the same hearing, said he does not doubt Chinese peacekeeping forces "serve a dual purpose as eyes and ears on the ground for the Chinese Communist Party," while declining to discuss specific intelligence assessments 12. Waltz said China is the largest troop contributor among the five permanent Security Council members and the second-largest UN financial contributor, and that Washington is using its Security Council influence to downsize the South Sudan mission, an area of Chinese energy and geopolitical interest 12. Representative Scott Perry told the hearing that Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative had become intertwined with several UN agencies, and Waltz said the administration had demanded the UN Secretariat stop using a Belt and Road-linked trust fund 2.

Analysis
Washington's push to shrink UNMISS sets up a Security Council fight in which Beijing's own veto leverage over its South Sudan energy interests becomes the real test of the administration's UN reform drive. Waltz's demand that the Secretariat drop its Belt and Road-linked trust fund extends that effort beyond peacekeeping into severing Chinese financial channels across UN agencies. South China Morning Post supplies the sole primary-adjacent account of the hearing; Breitbart and IANS merely reproduce the same Waltz and Biggs quotes, thinning the independent evidentiary base. Low confidence attaches to any drawdown timeline, since no mandate renewal date or draft resolution text yet exists and China's P5 veto gives it a procedural block regardless of the diplomatic merits. Lawmakers may be amplifying dual-use suspicions about Chinese peacekeepers mainly to justify broader UN funding cuts rather than because new intelligence points to an active espionage threat.

5 sources

US lawmakers accuse China of using UN peacekeeping forces to spy on countries - South China Morning Post
China's growing UN clout alarms US lawmakers - IANS
U.S. Lawmakers Accuse China of Using U.N. Peacekeepers for Espionage - Breitbart
Hearing with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz on UN reform - House Foreign Affairs Committee
United Nations Accountability and Reform: Advancing an America First Foreign Policy Through Strategic Diplomacy and Burden Sharing - House Foreign Affairs Committee