China’s peacekeeping activities within the UN: Features, challenges, and prospects

Abstract

In recent years, China has been vigorously strengthening its international authority, consistently building its image as a responsible great power. One of the vivid manifestations of these efforts has been China’s active involvement in peacekeeping activities under the auspices of the United Nations. Currently, among the permanent members of the UN Security Council, China is the largest supplier of contingents for UN peacekeeping operations and the second largest donor of financing for these operations. At the same time, the PRC’s peacekeeping policy faces a number of endogenous and exogenous risks and challenges that remain somewhat understudied. The first section of the paper examines the key stages in the development of the PRC’s approaches to peacekeeping. It is shown that while all other members of the UN Security Council are gradually reducing the number of contingents and cutting funding to UN peacekeeping activities, China, on the contrary, is consistently increasing its of support for UN peacekeeping operations. The second section identifies current trends and prospects for the development of China’s peacekeeping activities. The author emphasizes that China is not only actively engaging into the existing UN peace-keeping mechanisms and initiatives, but also offers its own original conceptual approaches to address the challenges related to peacemaking and peacebuilding. The concept of ‘developmental peace’ proposed by Chinese researchers is of particular interest in this context. At the same time, as shown in the third section, this activity of the PRC faces a number of problems and challenges. The author notes that China’s objective contribution to peacekeeping activities and international recognition of its efforts are actually very asymmetrical. To this should be added the active efforts of Western countries aimed at discrediting the peacekeeping activities of the PRC, manifested in pushing of narratives about the exceptional selfishness of Chinese initiatives and China’s desire to achieve unilateral advantages in the ‘Taiwan issue’ by exploiting peacekeeping agenda. Assessing the prospects for the development of the PRC’s peacekeeping activities in these conditions, the author emphasizes the need to deepen cooperation with various regional organizations; increase the use of public diplomacy tools and improve the legislative framework for peacekeeping in China itself.