People's Liberation Army soldiers keep watch in Changping, China, during a display of military equipment used on U.N. peace missions. (Andrew Higgins/the Washington Post)
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
By Andrew HigginsWashington Post Staff Writer
China showcasing its softer side; growing role in U.N. peacekeeping signals desire to project image of benign power
CHANGPING, CHINA -- After bulking up its armed forces with new missiles and other advanced weaponry, China recently invited U.S. and other foreign military officials to inspect a less bellicose side of the People's Liberation Army: a fleet of bulldozers.
Through clouds of smoke generated to simulate the look of a war zone, a PLA engineering brigade showed off its earthmovers, mine-clearing gear and other nonlethal hardware at a base north of Beijing.
The display, put on shortly after President Obama left Beijing last month, represented what China sees as an important part of its answer to a question that shadowed Obama's eight-day Asia tour: How will China use the formidable power generated by its relentless economic growth?
The engineering unit that staged the show is spearheading China's growing involvement in international peacekeeping, a cause that Beijing for decades denounced as a violation of its stated commitment to noninterference in the affairs of other nations but that it now embraces.
Today, about 2,150 Chinese military and police personnel are deployed in support of U.N. missions. They serve around the world, from Haiti to Sudan.
A 'peaceful rise'
Though the peacekeepers represent only a fraction of the PLA's more than 2 million soldiers -- and account for a minuscule part of the Chinese military budget -- China's enthusiasm for peacekeeping signals a clear desire to project an image as a responsible and peaceable great power.
And even if, as some experts say, China's total military spending is perhaps double the stated amount, it is still less than a third of the United States' basic military budget, which excludes spending toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We promise that we will fulfill our duties to safeguard peace," Senior Col. Yi Changhe, an engineering brigade commander, told the visiting foreign defense officials.
When Germany and later Japan emerged as military powers on the back of surging economies more than a century ago, a calamitous reordering of the world order followed. China, pursuing what it calls a "peaceful rise," points to the PLA's peacekeeping activities as evidence of its benign intentions.
But while increasingly willing to let its soldiers don the blue helmets worn by U.N. peacekeepers, China has shown little enthusiasm for the U.N.-sanctioned mission that currently matters most to Washington -- the war in Afghanistan.
Wariness toward NATO
When the United States wanted to fly a group of Mongolian trainers to Afghanistan in October, China objected to letting the aircraft go over its territory. Beijing eventually gave the flight a green light -- but only after ammunition was taken off the plane, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
Though authorized by the United Nations, the Afghanistan mission is led by NATO, an organization China views with deep wariness. Beijing blames NATO for the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war.
China's shock at NATO's military campaign in the former Yugoslavia helped prod Beijing into playing a bigger role in U.N. peacekeeping, said Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and co-author of a recent report on China's peacekeeping activities.
China, he said, is "highly unlikely" to send soldiers to Afghanistan to help "what is essentially a NATO operation, albeit with a United Nations blessing."
Beijing recently enrolled a small group of soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq in a mine-clearing course at the PLA's University of Science and Technology in Nanjing and has expressed interest in helping to train Afghan police. But it has balked at providing direct support for NATO's campaign against the Taliban.
China has focused its resources on supporting operations run directly by the United Nations. It has more troops and police deployed on U.N. missions than the United States, Russia and Britain combined. Of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, only France makes anywhere near as big a contribution to U.N. peacekeeping.
Washington has generally welcomed China's increasing readiness to join U.N. operations, though a Pentagon report this year noted that the capabilities that allow China to participate in distant peacekeeping and humanitarian missions could also "allow China to project power to ensure access to resources or enforce claims to disputed territories."
Obama, during his visit to Beijing, described greater international engagement by China as a necessary and welcome by-product of its economic strength.
"A growing economy is joined by growing responsibilities,"
he said after talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Presence in Sudan
China has moved far from what, under Mao Zedong, was a policy of steadfast opposition to military interventions by foreign powers. In the 1950s, China actively resisted U.N.-backed military missions, most notably during the Korean War, when its soldiers battled U.S. and other foreign troops fighting under the U.N. flag in support of South Korea.
Chinese troops serve in 10 countries, from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, but they are most active in Africa, where China has ramped up its diplomatic and economic presence as it seeks oil and other resources to fuel its economy. They focus on providing engineering, medical and logistical help. A top U.N. official who visited the Chinese capital recently said Beijing is considering sending combats troops overseas for the first time.
Chinese personnel have a reputation for tight discipline and have not been tarnished by the sex and corruption scandals that have afflicted peacekeepers from some other nations. Critics, however, note that the largest number of Chinese peacekeepers -- nearly 800 military and police personnel-- are stationed in Sudan, which provides substantial amounts of oil to China and whose government Beijing has strongly supported despite widespread outrage over the killings in the western region of Darfur.
Speaking after a conference on peacekeeping last month in Beijing, Alain Le Roy, the U.N. undersecretary for peacekeeping operations, called Chinese troops "very professional" and said the United Nations has "no concerns" about their role in Sudan. Beijing's close diplomatic ties to countries such as Sudan, he said, give it leverage that "we will try to make the best use of."
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