China increases peace keeping role
Updated
From North Korea to Zimbabwe to Burma, China has long been criticised for shielding rogue regimes from tough international action.
So it might come as a surprise that China has gradually been taking a more active role in UN peacekeeping. In fact, it's now the second largest provider of UN peacekeepers of all five permanent members of the Security Council. China doesn't provide combat troops but it does provide more than 2,000 civilian police, military observers, engineers and medical units in ten peacekeeping missions worldwide.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speaker: Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, North East Asia Project Director for the International Crisis Group
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JOANNA McCARTHY: Stephanie, when China joined the Security Council in 1971, it rejected the entire concept of peacekeeping, so what's changed?
STEPHANIE KLEINE-AHLBRANDT: Well, that's absolutely right. In fact, China was deeply distrustful of the organisation back then, which it saw really as just a tool for the US and Russia in the Cold War but in the '80s we saw "reform and opening" with Deng Xiaoping and China decided to prioritise peaceful relations. It started to join the World Bank, the IMF and began to play a limited role in peacekeeping. If you wind forward to today, China has really pretty much fully embraced the UN as part of its multilateral strategy, because China's leaders see that the country has benefited from the UN by preserving, essentially, global peace so that China can pursue its economic growth. At the same time the UN is an important means for China to show the world that it has peaceful intentions as its power begins or its power continues to grow. Within this context, peace keeping is a very, sort of, effective tool to show its commitment to the UN.
JOANNA McCARTHY: How does this sit, though, with what's always been the cornerstone of China's foreign policy, which is, of course, non-interference in domestic affairs of other nations?
STEPHANIE KLEINE-AHLBRANDT: Yeah, correct. You know, China's previous staunch adherence to non-interference has actually given way to what is pretty much a more pragmatic case-by-case approach and that's been driven by Beijing's calculation of changing economic and political interests. So you have, of course, international image concerns that are arising from China's, you know, relationships with difficult regimes but you also have the fact that countries torn by war and strife present serious economic and political risks for China. So you know, the crisis in Darfur, if it escalates, is going to directly affect Chinese investments in the country. You see Chinese citizens working in conflict countries being kidnapped and killed, so Beijing has stepped back from its previous pretty much unconditional support for countries such as Sudan, Zimbabwe and North Korea.
JOANNA McCARTHY: As you say, China has had this desire to project an image of a peaceful rise as it grows in stature as a world power. Is this why China has never provided combat troops to peacekeeping missions?
STEPHANIE KLEINE-AHLBRANDT: Certainly that's part of it. But, you know, I actually believe that the focus on combat troops is somewhat misplaced in China's case because the types of troops China does provide, civilian police as well as force enablers - so that's things like army engineers, field hospitals and nurses, de-mining units et cetera - they're all filling a key gap in peacekeeping. These units are costly to equip and train. And in reality, Chinese troops are carrying light weapons and going on patrol as civilian police. So it's a bit of a false distinction. You know, police units are in very high demand these days because peacekeeping more and more is rebuilding and reconstructing societies. So China should be encouraged to step up its contributions of these types of troops.
JOANNA McCARTHY: Stephanie, where some might see some kind of grand strategic vision behind China's actions, in fact you say on the contrary, there have been tensions between China's foreign affairs, military and economic arms on this question of peacekeeping. How have these tensions played out in places like the Sudan, for example?
STEPHANIE KLEINE-AHLBRANDT: Yeah, well, that's absolutely true. You know, the popular belief about China is that there's this sort of unified and coordinated entity, you know, a "China Inc". But that really doesn't accurately describe the policy process in Beijing. There's so many complex tensions between the various actors and that's both within Beijing, for example, you know, as you said between the diplomats and economic ministry officials and military officials and then between Beijing and the provincial state actors. So on peacekeeping itself you have many different actors and bureaucracies involved and these actors don't have interests that align, right? This is pretty much true of all countries so generally the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is very supportive of peacekeeping, obviously because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a keen interest in integrating China within the UN while the Ministries of Defence are more reticent and more protective, you know, at the same time, economic actors often have found themselves in situations where they've gone to countries where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs frankly would have wished they hadn't gone because in the end there are problems. So there are a lot of different tensions.
