Bigger role

After the mid-1990s and the advent of China’s rapid development, its UN role began to change and the country’s participation in UN programs became more holistic, according to Zheng Qirong, Vice President of the China Foreign Affairs University.

One specific area where China has been active is UN peacekeeping missions. In 1990, a team of five Chinese military observers were sent to the Middle East, followed two years later by Chinese peacekeeping troops being deployed in Cambodia as part of the UN peacekeeping mission there at the time.

UN statistics show that China currently has about 3,000 peacekeepers in UN global peacekeeping missions, including operations in South Sudan, Mali and Lebanon. This makes China the largest troop contributor among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the other four are the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia). In terms of financial support, China’s contribution of 10.2 percent of the UN peacekeeping costs from 2016-18 is only surpassed by the United States.

Speaking at a peacekeeping summit at the UN Headquarters in New York in September last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that China would take the lead to set up a permanent peacekeeping police squad and would build a peacekeeping standby force of 8,000 troops. In addition, China is also to actively consider the UN’S request of sending more engineering, transportation and medical personnel to join peacekeeping missions, train 2,000 foreign peacekeepers and carry out 10 mine-sweeping assistance programs by 2020.

“All these [programs] suggest that China is seeking to be a globally responsible actor and even operate in challenging environments,” said George N. Tzogopoulos, Research Associate at the European Council of Foreign Relations.

But China’s contribution to global stability is far more than its contribution of peacekeeping troops. The country actively participated in negotiations on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula hosting six rounds of Six-party Talks in this regard, making active contributions to the peace process on the