So what is China's purpose of actively striving for leadership in international organizations? Is it healthy competition or ulterior motives? First, we can speculate from the changes in China's investment in the IMF that one of China's goals in striving for leadership is to increase its "international voice." As China's share of the IMF's investment has continued to rise in recent years (from about 4% to 6%), China's voting power in the IMF has also expanded significantly. Although it is temporarily ranked third in the world, it is only 0.06% behind Japan, which is the second place with declining investment.
This may be fine, but it might be strange if the Image Manipulation Service international organization worked closely with China because of a change of Chinese leader. Josh Rogin mentioned in the Washington Post that when China's Houlin Zhao became the secretary general of the ITU in 2015, the ITU began to increase cooperation with China, including promoting China's "Belt and Road" and defending China's telecom leader "Huawei"; in 2017 China's Liu Zhenmin was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), which also began promoting the "One Belt, One Road" policy and working with Beijing authorities to establish a "large data research center" in China.
In addition, last year, Kristine Lee, a scholar at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that "China is using the United Nations as a stage to rationalize dictatorial behavior." Why did she say that? In 2011, when the United States cut its annual budget to the United Nations Educational, Teaching and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) by $80 million (about 22 percent of its total), China took the opportunity to fill it.