In 2016 China received 180 votes but this fell to 139 in 2020 against the background of the Xinjiang controversies. Xi Jinping’s crackdown on the region and its Uyghur population has been labelled an attempted genocide by some governments, human rights groups and legal bodies.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) has now garnered support from MPs in 15 countries including Italy and Bolivia, two countries that have not greatly engaged on the issue before. The MPs have written to their foreign ministries urging them not to back China.

China has always relied on strong support in Latin America, but the Bolivian senator Centa Rek López said support for China’s candidacy from certain countries in Latin America “reflects both their own repressive policies, history of human rights abuses and their ties to the People’s Republic of China, which has facilitated corruption, surveillance and economic dependency”.