For about two weeks now, the Chinese-language website Chinamil.com, which is operated under the auspices of PLA Daily, has been promoting with banner headlines a special feature titled “In the Middle East, There Is a Chinese Peacekeeping Engineering Brigade.” Included are previously published dispatches by Chinese reporters embedded with Chinese troops on UN peacekeeping missions. The reports describe Chinese UN peacekeepers in Lebanon clearing landmines and removing and detonating unexploded cluster munitions. There are “soft” stories as well, including one account of a Chinese soldier postponing his wedding in order to serve in the mission. The online display also features nearly five hours of China Central Television video footage and some 200 photos depicting blue-helmeted Chinese soldiers performing peacekeeping duties. China joined the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (UNSCPO) in 1988. The following year it sent non-military personnel to Namibia as observers of that country’s general elections. In 1990 Chinese troops began participating in UN peacekeeping activities. Official Chinese media report that there are currently 1,546 Chinese peacekeepers serving under the UN flag in the Congo, Liberia, Lebanon, and Sudan. And as of this June, 7,293 soldiers have participated in 17 UN peacekeeping missions across the globe, including in Cambodia, Haiti, East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. This Chinamil.com special feature on China’s UN peacekeepers was preceded by a four-day PLA Peacekeeping Work Conference in Beijing. Speaking at the closing ceremony on June 22nd, Major General Zhang Qinsheng, deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA, noted:
As indicated by Zhang’s statement, Beijing’s participation in UN peacekeeping is an important component of its overall diplomatic effort to project an image of China as a responsible superpower. Moreover, it presents Chinese troops with “an important avenue” to benefit directly from training and access to state-of-the-art military hardware, as evidenced by this account from a Chinese military observer in West Sahara:
