Business interests propel change in China's global role

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One of the chief tasks of any government is to ensure the safety of its citizens abroad.

Sometimes this might even require military action to evacuate or maybe even extricate people from some crisis in a far-flung country.

In this sense, China is fast becoming no different from any other major player in the world.

And in the process, its foreign policy and its global footprint are significantly changing.

A new book released here by the International Institute for Strategic Studies at its Shangri-La Dialogue - Asia's premier security forum - investigates for the first time these subtle changes in China's global role.

Entitled China's Strong Arm: Protecting Citizens and Assets Abroad, it consciously borrows a phrase attributed to the great British statesman Palmerston during the zenith of Britain's imperial power, when he spoke of its "strong arm" in protecting its passport holders wherever they ventured.

According to one of the book's co-authors, Jonas Parello-Plesner, a Danish diplomat: "For some years now, Chinese companies have been going out to unstable parts of the world - to Sudan for oil exploration, to Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan for mining and construction - and have brought along with them a corps of Chinese workers which has created... a profoundly changed global risk map for China's leaders, both in terms of its human presence and for its assets abroad."

The seminal event, he says, was in 2011 in Libya "when China managed in 12 days in late February through to the beginning of March to rescue more than 35,000 workers who came out by ship, aeroplane, or by bus".

He points to a similar evacuation in Yemen in March, "where Chinese naval vessels went in, docked and brought out more than 600 Chinese citizens as well as other foreign nationals".

In this sense, China was behaving exactly like other major countries when faced by such a crisis.

But surely the despatch of warships to a conflict zone raises questions about that traditional cornerstone of China's foreign policy, namely non-interference in other countries' affairs?

Constant tension

Mathieu Duchatel, a specialist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who is based in Beijing (and the book's other co-author) told me that this shift in China's foreign policy was "clearly being driven by practical concerns rather than ideology".

"There was a major turning point in 2004, which was completely unexpected," he says.

"Within a few months, there were three attacks on Chinese nationals - one in Sudan, one in Pakistan and one in Afghanistan.

"And this prompted a strong reaction in China - it attracted the attention of the top leadership. China realised that it had so many nationals overseas and that some of them were based in unstable countries - war zones in some cases - and so they realised that protecting them was a national interest."

This realisation established what has become a constant tension in China's foreign policy that has not yet been resolved.

As Mr Parello-Plesner told me: "China has companies willing to accept risk who are out there to secure business or markets in virgin territories where there isn't necessarily a high-level of Western competition.

"That's why in the search for oil they have gone into Sudan."

Then, on the other hand, you have the Chinese government, which is traditionally inclined towards non-interference and more risk averse and would rather stay out of troublespots.

These two trends converge, he says, and "we see the Beijing government having to do much more, often in innovative ways".

He gave the example of South Sudan where the Chinese are now fielding a combat battalion in the UN mission that's there to stabilise the country.

"But it's also part of the UN mandate that they can help to secure oil workers who are predominantly Chinese, so there you see a combination of China pursuing its national interest which works for the broader public good."

Fortuitous

This of course raises a fundamental question - does China have the military resources needed for such interventions to protect its nationals abroad?

In some cases the answer is clearly yes.

This is now explicitly part of Beijing's new defence strategy that was published last week.

But, as Mr Duchatel told me, the Chinese navy's involvement in evacuations in Libya and Yemen was slightly fortuitous in that it had warships nearby, as part of anti-piracy operations in the Gulf.

What about a crisis further from China's own resources - suppose an evacuation were needed in a West African country where over 30,000 Chinese passport holders might be involved?

China, he says, "simply couldn't carry that out with the same level of military involvement".

There are those in the West who see this growing Chinese global role as a potential threat, offering Beijing a potential excuse to justify the deployment of military forces in all kinds of places that might traditionally have been well away from its routine concerns.

Of course, China does not yet have the means to do this.

Common ground

But Mr Duchatel suggests that on the contrary, this could perhaps be a positive development.

"It is hard to think of scenarios of any evacuation from a country where the West and China would be opposed," he says.

In contrast to what is happening in the South China Sea, this is an area where there is a lot of common ground and, he argues, "there is potential for China and the West - meaning the US and Europe - to work together to enhance stability".

There are technical things the militaries could do together in cases of evacuation.

Says Mr Duchatel: "It is pretty clear that when there is an evacuation, China is not the only country to evacuate - Pakistan, the Europeans and the US all carry out such operations and there has to be some degree of co-ordination just to avoid competition for limited resources like landing areas."