Introduction

The introductory chapter explains why it is timely to focus on China’s discourse and behaviour with respect to the UN’s human protection agenda. The book’s contributions include advancing understanding of the obstacles faced by the UN in redefining the concept of security to embrace the idea of human protection, and China’s contributions and general wariness with respect to this policy area. The research question focuses on how a more powerful China satisfies its desire to shape global norms relating to human protection in ways that not only reflect its ideological beliefs, but also bolster its image as a responsible great power. Also covered in brief before further elaboration in chapter one is the methodological approach adopted; the organizing framework associated with China’s beliefs, power, and international image; the sources utilized; and the structure of each chapter and central argument that is arrived at. This introductory chapter also provides chapter outlines for chapters one through eight.

Conclusion

This chapter begins with a summary of the main findings deriving from the issue areas covered in this study. It also assesses the extent to which China’s growing power has been used in service of the firmer articulation of its ideological beliefs, together with an effort to reconstitute what it means to be a responsible great power in the global system. The chapter concludes that China’s own triadic model linking together developmentalism, the strong state, and social stability has established a place in the UN’s understanding of how human protection can best be obtained, leading to a potential diminution in the UN’s attachment to and association with its three-pillar structure of development, peace and security, and human rights as the best guarantees of the wellbeing of humankind. China is found to be a conservative actor, working to restrict the human protection focus of the UN Security Council, and to weaken the emphasis on civil and political rights as major sources of protection. The Chinese leadership’s preference is for the UN to reinforce its position as an inter-state governance mechanism where national authorities decide on priorities, and international actors are enablers of the government in power. However, the UN’s resilience in liberal normative areas and resistance to change should also not be overlooked, and remain capable of constraining China’s ability to shape new understandings of human protection. This is especially so where the different constituencies working within the UN remain attentive to the opportunities that its design, membership, and embedded procedures have provided it.

UN Peace Operations

The primary aim of this chapter is to explain the apparent paradox of increasing Chinese support and involvement even as UN peace operations have become more complex, dangerous, and intrusive. The argument explores why Beijing moved from a position of hostility to UN operations in the Maoist era to one of constructive if still cautious engagement. It then establishes how the building of a positive image and reputation through involvement in UN peace operations has proven useful to the more active presentation of its core beliefs about the role of such activity in generating peace and security, before assessing the extent to which its ideas contradict or complement some of the central recommendations offered in the major reports that the UN has commissioned on this topic and that will be referenced in the opening sections of this chapter. A final section concentrates on Beijing’s decision to augment further the UN’s capacity to carry out peace operations, particularly after 2015, before exploring some of the consequences, actual and potential, that have come in the wake of that decision.

Positioning Development in Human Protection

This chapter concentrates on the Beijing government’s attachment to a view that human protection requires a state to be economically developed, domestically stable, and strongly effective and capable. The chapter places the focus on Chinese official arguments in support of this articulated triadic position, but also examines a range of Chinese and non-Chinese scholarly perspectives on this topic area. It situates Chinese voices within a larger, mostly UN-centred, policy literature that explores the relationship between economic development and the management of international peace and security. The chapter explores whether there is a gap between UN and Chinese thinking on how best to prevent conflict and give better protection to individuals caught up in violence, entertaining also the possibility that there has been something of a convergence of UN and official Chinese perspectives.

Defining the Scope

This chapter provides the building blocks for the argument that is to come. It explains the value of adopting a social ontology in order better to understand the way that power, beliefs, and image can interrelate in a mutually constitutive way to shape a state’s discourse and behaviour. The chapter also justifies the book’s focus on the UN in the post-Cold War era and the UN decision to make human protection a core element of UN activity. Turning to the China case, the chapter demonstrates Beijing’s growing role within the UN deriving from its greater familiarity with the UN environment, growing global influence and interests, and an increasingly more ambitious central leadership. It sets out China’s official and wider societal beliefs associated with the idea of human protection, explaining how and why the UN is useful to China in its performative role as ‘responsible great power’.

The UN’s Human Rights Bodies

This chapter examines the evolution of the UN’s two human rights bodies: namely, the UN Commission on Human Rights and its replacement, the UN Human Rights Council. Three key moments in China’s history in relation to these organizations—notably the Commission’s (and Sub-Commission’s) role during and after the Tiananmen crisis of June 1989, the movement from Commission to Council in 2005–6, as well as the impact of the UN’s 2011 Libyan intervention and the advent of the broader ‘Arab Spring’—are used to uncover how and why Beijing has worked to influence the procedures of bodies designed to advance the UN’s human protection agenda. In all these instances, China’s active involvement in the work of these bodies demonstrates a potent relationship between its ideological beliefs and concerns about image. The chapter concludes that China has become less reticent and more confident in putting forward its world view about what best promotes human rights. The balance has shifted in its approach from an essentially defensive strategy towards one that aims to promote its own ideas in this issue area. Beijing is arguing for a development-first model based on the assumption that the benefits of its politico-economic model, and the relationship of that model to improved levels of human protection, have become plainer to many other states.

The Syrian Crisis

This chapter begins with a brief exploration of the various phases of this devastating conflict. It explores why China has used its veto power on seven occasions over the course of this war (up to September 2019); a puzzle, because vetoing is extremely unusual Chinese behaviour. The chapter also explores the image consequences for China, mostly damaging in the early stages of this war, that have flowed from that change in its approach. It references some of the resolutions that have caused UN Security Council division. In particular, it focuses on the justifications Beijing has offered for the voting decisions it has made over the course of a devastating conflict that has included the use of chemical weapons. The Syrian case is afforded its own chapter in this study not only because of China’s more frequent use of the veto, but also because of Syria’s status as one of the worst failures in human protection since World War II. The case study is additionally instructive with regard to China’s approaches to the UN’s POC and R2P agendas.

The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P)

This chapter traces the origins and elaboration of the R2P norm. It places the accent on the process of norm development during which a variety of states, including China, were able to shape the norm’s characteristics. It begins with a discussion of the norm’s origins in 1990s debates, initial reception in 2001, formalization in documentary form in 2005, and then its implementation structure as elaborated in 2009. Next, it turns to the Libyan intervention in 2011 under the R2P banner and the impact of that usage on R2P’s status. The tracing of the R2P’s pathway shows that for a state, such as China, that is concerned about international image and does not wish to appear obstructive or irresponsible, it can find welcome and bedrock support for its conservative attitude towards R2P among several other states concerned about the norm’s implications. The discussion also shows how the complex layering of the norm has presented China with the ability to shape the norm discursively and to insert its own normative preferences into the process of R2P elaboration.

The Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

The protection of civilians in armed conflict (POC) since 1999 has been recognized as a core obligation of the United Nations, and as vital to the legitimation of the Security Council’s role and status in its efforts to control and confront large-scale violence. Over the course of this same period, and with the passage in 2000 of Security Council Resolution 1325, the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda has also become a prominent part of action associated with the protection of civilians. This chapter first discusses some of the steps that have been taken to put POC and WPS on the UN’s agenda, before turning to the official Chinese response to these two core areas of the UN’s activities. That response illustrates once again a complex interplay between Beijing’s understanding that it must be responsive in this area of action, while remaining attentive to its belief in the need to ensure the preservation of a state-based international order that includes a restrained UN Security Council interpretation of the types of conflict that represent threats to international peace and security. In both the POC and WPS policy areas, China accords a primary role to economic development as the most effective means of preventing the conflicts that are the source of civilian harm and for improving women’s rights and representation.