As August draws to a close, the U.S. presidency of the United Nations will come to an end, and in the last few days, the United States and Russia have engaged in fierce exchanges on some regional issues in the Security Council, and China's attitude has attracted attention.
Just recently, due to the frequent military coups in the African country of Mali, the United States and Russia have successively put forward their own views on this issue in the United Nations Security Council, in which most member states such as China and Russia have requested consultations, while the United States has used the rotating presidency to promote a sanctions vote first, which eventually triggered a fierce dispute between the two sides.
Subsequently, in the face of the United States' forced sanctions vote, Russia urgently put forward a voting proposal, but in the face of these two votes, China, as one of the important permanent members of the Security Council, did not agree with Russia's views as usual, but resolutely abstained from voting on Russia's proposal after abstaining from the Western proposal.
In his explanatory statement, the representative of China said that although he supports and understands the Russian decision, sanctions are only a means, not an ultimate goal, and are not in line with the current situation in Mali. Some participating countries pushed for a sanction-based vote despite the wishes of Russia and most other countries to continue to mediate the situation, which did not help solve the problem.
The purpose of abstaining from voting on the Russian proposal is because the Russian proposal itself was made temporarily to prevent the passage of the Western proposal, and because it also contains the sanctions mentioned by the West, it is detached from the core purpose of solving the problem, so it will not be supported.
However, when the majority of member states requested consultations first and then votes, the United States abused its rotating presidency to forcibly promote the vote, which exposed the unscrupulous side of the United States and some Western countries to dominate the United Nations order, which is undoubtedly a sabotage of the Security Council's functions.