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2 There's method in
China's peace push By Rebecca
Jackson
Last month, Chinese peacekeepers
started arriving in the troubled Darfur region of
Sudan as part of the long-debated, long-awaited
United Nations and African Union hybrid mission.
China now contributes over 7,000 peacekeepers to
21 missions across the world, more than the rest
of the UN Security Council's permanent five
members combined. Overall, China is the
thirteenth-largest contributor of peacekeeping
troops.
Claiming that China was complicit
in the conflict through oil and
weapons trade with Khartoum, rebels
in the area immediately called for the withdrawal
of Chinese troops. Nevertheless, the troops have
stayed put. Their presence in the country
illustrates how far China has come in its
involvement in peacekeeping efforts. Despite
all this, China-watchers have tended to neglect
peacekeeping as an expanding arena of involvement
in international relations. Such is the case in
Africa, China's showcase for peacekeeping. The
continent hosts the majority of ongoing missions,
but troops committed by industrialized countries
now account for just 6% of all troops.
In
the early years after joining the UN, in the
1970s, China avoided supporting peacekeeping
missions - both financially and with contributions
of troops - saying that they infringed upon the
sovereignty of the states involved. But after two
decades of reform and opening up, China has now
started to reassess its approach to peacekeeping
missions.
In 1981, China participated in
its first peacekeeping vote, and in 1990
dispatched its first peacekeepers to the Middle
East. Since then, the country has contributed
peacekeepers to missions across the globe - beyond
Africa, in Cambodia, Bosnia/Kosovo, East Timor,
Afghanistan, Haiti and Lebanon.
As China
expert Bates Gill, director of Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, points
out, in real terms, China's contribution to UN
peacekeeping is comparatively small. "China
contributes less than 1% of both the overall UN
budget and the UN peacekeeping budget." And the
financial contributions of rest of the permanent
five are still significantly higher than China's.
Viewed over time, however, China's
peacekeeping activities today demonstrate a
significant shift.
China's participation
in peacekeeping missions now also extends beyond
those with a Chapter VI mandate, in which
countries should first seek their own resolution
to disputes, to those with a Chapter VII mandate,
permitting the use of military force in order to
achieve peace.
China has traditionally
favored conflict-ridden countries to resolve their
own disputes, as the sovereignty of states is of
utmost importance. But some flexibility is now
evident on the issue of non-interference, as seen
most recently in China's vote in favor of the
UNAMID mission in Darfur.
China has also
demonstrated increased flexibility on the extent
to which force can be used in missions. The
International Force in East Timor (INTERFET) was
permitted to "take all necessary measures" to
restore peace and security to the area. As with
the mission in Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and the
Democratic Republic of Congo, they demonstrate
that China will participate in operations using
military force marking a move into peace
enforcement activities.
The country's
participation in INTERFET also shows that, where
necessary, China will participate in missions that
do not primarily use UN troops. The East Timor
mission was led by Australia. Similarly, the peace
operations in Somalia in the early 1990s
demonstrate that even where the pivotal country is
the US, China will not necessary block resolutions
from being passed.
However, host state
acquiescence remains an important cornerstone of
China's acceptance of peacekeeping missions and
was a pre-conditional to China's involvement in
UNAMID in Darfur. In 1999, following mass
bloodshed in East Timor, China voted in favor of a
resolution to bring peace and security to the
region, but only after the invitation of the
government there.
INTERFET also
demonstrated the utmost importance of Security
Council authorization in peace keeping and peace
enforcement missions.
So what has
motivated China to become more involved in UN
peacekeeping efforts?
Maintaining a stable
and secure international environment is important
for China's "rise". Appearing to be a responsible
player is seen as an important way for China to
achieve this, and involvement in international
peacekeeping plays an integral role in projecting
this image.
As Major General Zhang
Qinsheng, deputy chief of General Staff for
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) put it,
"Chinese peacekeeping activities demonstrate our
country's image as a responsible superpower ...
and in the course of
peacekeeping
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