There is something increasingly difficult to take seriously about the language coming out of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week.

Every year the world's leaders gather beneath the UN banner and tell one another that the organisation represents all humanity, that global problems require global solutions and that nobody should be left behind. This year's language is no different. The official theme is “Restoring trust, managing transformation: A United Nations that delivers for all”. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

While the organisation itself has been invoking the Charter's opening words, “We the peoples”, and describing them as meaning “all of us”, outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres used his final General Assembly address on September 22 to call for greater international cooperation and warned against a world fractured by geopolitical divisions.

His comments have been referred to as stirring stuff in some quarters. There is just one glaring problem: when it comes to Taiwan, “all of us” suddenly appears to have a rather more limited meaning.

Taiwan is home to about 23.5mn people. It is a functioning democracy with its own elected government, military, currency, economy and borders, and it sits at the centre of some of the world's most important technology and semiconductor supply chains. At the same time, there is no danger of political oppression for criticising the president, his cabinet or the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Nobody disappears by speaking their mind. Taiwan is not China.

The nation’s expertise is relevant to many of the subjects the UN discusses incessantly, including public health, disaster response, climate change, aviation safety, technology and international trade.

Yet Taiwan remains excluded from any meaningful participation in the United Nations system in large part because the People's Republic of China (PRC) objects to it being treated separately.

This is not a secret. Beijing has spent decades making its position perfectly clear: Taiwan is part of China, the People's Republic is the sole legitimate representative of China at the UN and Taiwan has no separate place in the organisation. Beijing also insists that General Assembly Resolution 2758 provides the international legal basis for excluding Taiwan.

There is, however, an uncomfortable reality concerning that last claim. Resolution 2758, passed in 1971, concerned the representation of China at the United Nations. It recognised the representatives of the People's Republic of China as the legitimate representatives of China – a point no one in Taiwan would with contest. But nowhere does the resolution even mention Taiwan.

Over the years though, Beijing has developed its own much broader interpretation of the resolution, arguing that the resolution also establishes that Taiwan, despite not being mentioned, cannot participate separately in the UN system.

Taiwan quite rightly rejects this interpretation and argues that Resolution 2758 settled who represented China at the UN. It does not explain in any way Taiwan's status or its right to participate in international organisations.

Whilst clear in and of itself, the lack of reference to Taiwan in the aforementioned resolution is one thing, but much harder to ignore is what happens whenever anyone attempts to challenge Beijing's interpretation.

Governments that otherwise spend their time lecturing the world about freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion and international cooperation become extraordinarily careful about even mentioning Taiwan. They talk about peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. They talk about “relevant parties”. They talk about maintaining the status quo. Reference is often made to the importance of international law.

But actually saying that Taiwan should participate in an international organisation can produce an entirely different diplomatic response from the western shores of the Taiwan Strait with Beijing repeatedly condemning attempts to give Taiwan international space. In doing so it is standard procedure to see China’s Communist Party elite pressure governments and organisations to accept its position on the fully functioning democracy to the east.

China is a permanent member of the Security Council, a major trading partner for much of the world and an increasingly powerful diplomatic actor. Governments across the world understand the consequences of crossing Beijing. So does the United Nations despite its hollow claims to represent the entire human race.

That is the more uncomfortable part of the Taiwan story. China's influence does not need to take the form of a formal veto over every meeting Taiwan might attend.

Its effectiveness lies partly in making governments and international institutions calculate the cost of saying something Beijing dislikes and practising a diplomatic form of self-censorship in which Taiwan becomes the subject everyone understands but many are too scared to name.

This is particularly striking at the UN, where the entire institutional vocabulary is - hypocritically - based on the supposed universality of international cooperation.

Five of Taiwan's diplomatic allies wrote to Guterres this month calling for Taiwan's meaningful participation in the organisation's work. The Taipei Times reported the letter on September 20. Taiwan has also renewed its annual campaign for UN participation, arguing that Resolution 2758 should not be used as a blanket justification for excluding it.

Somewhat surprisingly, the European Union, long an institution that kowtowed to China for fear of losing business opportunities has now added another awkward complication for the UN's position.

An EU spokesperson told Taiwan's Central News Agency on September 23 that Resolution 2758 does not mention Taiwan and said Taiwan should be allowed to participate in international systems where the relevant rules or established practices permit it, particularly where its expertise can add value. 

That is hardly a declaration of Taiwanese independence. It is not even a demand that Taiwan become a UN member. It is a much narrower and more practical proposition: where Taiwan has relevant technical expertise and the rules allow participation, it should be able to contribute.

And it is in this regard that the UN's hypocrisy is demonstrated, its rhetoric distinctly selective.

The organisation has mechanisms for participation which do not require full UN membership. Palestine has non-member observer-state status and participates extensively in the General Assembly. The European Union participates in the UN system despite not being a sovereign state. Specialist organisations, international institutions and other entities have various forms of engagement with the UN. So the proposition that allowing Taiwanese experts to participate in technical discussions would somehow require the UN to settle the entire question of Taiwan's ultimate political status is blatantly false.

A Taiwanese public-health expert attending a technical meeting does not alter Taiwan's constitutional status, nor does a Taiwanese disaster-response specialist contributing expertise in any way redraw the map of East Asia.

A Taiwanese semiconductor – something billions around the world rely upon every day – being discussed by engineers from Taipei looking into supply-chain resilience does not automatically amount to a declaration of independence.

The obstacle is therefore political rather than simply technical and Beijing does not want Taiwan to acquire international space which could be interpreted as recognition of its separate identity.

In turn, many governments are unwilling to pay the diplomatic or economic price of testing that position and the UN has repeatedly shown itself willing to live with the consequences even as it convinces itself that it represents every human on the planet.

To this end, it is difficult to describe this as anything other than a major weakness in the organisation's claim to universality. The UN can say that Taiwan's position is complicated, but what it cannot plausibly do is pretend that geopolitics and fear of China plays no role in Taiwan's exclusion. The hypocrisy the United Nations has perfected when it comes to talk of Taiwan becomes particularly uncomfortable when set against Guterres's own language. In his final General Assembly address, he called for international law and human rights to be upheld without double standards.

That is a perfectly reasonable principle, but what about Taiwan? The UN can insist that its institutions must be respected and that international cooperation is essential, while simultaneously allowing the political preferences of a lone member state to determine the limits of participation by a population of 23.5mn in East Asia.

The defenders of the existing arrangement will of course argue that the UN is an organisation of states, not a parliament of humanity, and that Taiwan's contested status makes its participation uniquely difficult.

But this exposes the problem rather than solving it. If the UN is fundamentally an organisation of governments operating within the realities of international power, then it should stop presenting itself as though it stands above those realities by implying that “We the peoples” means every person whose interests happen to be discussed inside the building.

The UN should instead acknowledge that the international system is governed not simply by principle but by power, diplomacy, economics and, in China's case, the ability to make governments and in turn the UN, very uncomfortable.

This is precisely why the UN's annual performance on Taiwan is so damaging to its already failing credibility. The organisation can dodge the bigger issue year in, year out, but it cannot explain with any degree of sincerity or credibility why Taiwan cannot be allowed meaningful participation wherever the relevant rules permit it.

The distinction between membership and participation matters, and the UN already has numerous examples demonstrating that international engagement does not necessarily require full recognition as a sovereign state.

Nobody is suggesting that the UN should settle the sovereignty dispute between Beijing and Taipei from the General Assembly podium and nobody is demanding that the organisation automatically admit Taiwan as a member state. The much simpler question is whether 23.5mn people should be excluded from international participation because one powerful government objects to them being there.

The European Union's latest comments suggest that this question can at least be separated from the much larger argument over sovereignty. The UN could do the same if it chose to but it chooses yet again to bury its head in the sand and ignore the issue.

If the UN really wants to talk about restoring trust, it might begin by explaining why its claim to represent “all of us” becomes so carefully qualified whenever China says no.