China joins UN peacekeepers in
Sudan By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - When soldiers of China's
People's Liberation Army join a United Nations
peacekeeping unit in Sudan early next month, they
will mark Beijing's new diplomatic assertiveness.
They will also signify a departure from a posture
of refusing to interfere in the internal affairs
of other countries.
Along with its newly
trained peacekeeping force, China is also
exporting an alternative diplomacy that it hopes
will serve its interests as an ascending
superpower. As a country that has pursued a model
of economic prosperity without Western-style
democracy, China's formula for
conflict resolution advocates economic aid and
development that skirt political reform.
No place in the world exemplifies China's
attempts to prove the viability of its development
vision better than Sudan.
Beijing has come
to be seen as a power broker in that African
country because it buys two-thirds of its oil
output and supplies its government with weapons. A
four-year-old conflict in western Sudan's Darfur
region has pitted China against other
international powers demanding sanctions against
the Khartoum regime for supporting violence.
As a veto-wielding member of the UN
Security Council, China has blocked Western moves
for sanctions and insisted that UN peacekeeping
forces to Darfur should be sent in only with
Sudanese consent.
More than 200,000 people
have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in
the Darfur fighting that started in 2003. Local
rebels began the conflict by attacking government
troops. The Khartoum government responded by
arming Arab horsemen, called Janjaweed, and
sending them to terrorize the non-Arab population.
US President George Bush has called the killings
in Darfur genocide.
Chinese officials have
all along rejected criticism that Beijing's aid
for Khartoum is indirectly prolonging the
humanitarian crisis. They insist that strong
economic growth through trade and investment would
reduce social conflicts by raising incomes and
improving quality of life.
Chinese
international-relations experts have joined the
argument, saying Beijing would work for the
acceptance of its political outlook as a
mainstream view.
"The route of the Darfur
crisis lies with the fight for ecological survival
and not with any racial conflicts," He Wenping,
head of African studies at the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences, told the Beijing Youth Daily.
"This view may not be universally accepted yet,
but more and more politicians are coming to
realize that the better way to help Sudan is not
through sanctions but through economic aid that
would eradicate poverty."
The interview
came as China showcased to foreign media its
315-member engineering unit that will be sent to
Darfur next month for a combined United Nations
and African Union peacekeeping force approved by
the Security Council in July.
Chinese
soldiers will be responsible for building bridges
and roads and exploring water sources in Darfur,
according to senior Colonel Dai Shaoan, a director
of the Defense Ministry's office of peacekeeping
affairs. The unit's dispatch represents China's
willingness to "quickly restore peace and start
reconstruction work", Dai told the media from the
unit's training base in Qinyang, Henan province.
Chinese experts say Khartoum's nod to the
26,000-strong AU-UN peacekeeping force after
months of negotiations should be credited to
Beijing's behind-the-scenes diplomacy and its
unwavering support for the government in Khartoum.
"Even China's harshest critics cannot deny
that Beijing's involvement was decisive in getting
Sudanese government to agree to implement the next
steps of Kofi Annan's [former UN secretary
general] peace plan for Darfur," He Wenping said.
Foreign diplomats and experts on Darfur
note that Beijing also helped in persuading Sudan
to attend negotiations with rebel groups next
month in Libya. The US special envoy for Darfur,
Andrew Natsios, said he was not sure what had
pushed Beijing to act more decisively on Darfur in
recent months, but "China is being constructive,
using its leverage with the Sudanese government".
"I think the Chinese are like a locomotive
that is speeding up," he told an audience at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington. "They are doing things we didn't ask
them to do."
Detractors argue that China
has been spurred into action by an international
campaign linking the genocide in Darfur with the
2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Rights activists and
Hollywood celebrities have joined forces calling
for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics if China
does not do more to stop the violence in Darfur.
But Beijing has rebuffed attempts to
politicize the Olympics and sought instead to
garner more support for the event by inviting top
politicians to attend it. During the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum in Sydney this month,
Bush said he had accepted an invitation by Chinese
President Hu Jintao to attend the Beijing Olympics
next August.
Last week, China's special
envoy on Darfur, Liu Guijin defended Beijing's
record in Sudan and said his country would
continue to refrain from applying political
pressure on the Khartoum regime. "Political
pressure is not conducive towards resolving
conflicts," Liu said at a press conference.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
