【2011.6.14 WPR】China's Libya Hedge Highlights Shift on Noninterference

rhapsody

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.c ... -on-noninterference

The meeting last week between China's ambassador to Qatar and the head of Libya's opposition movement signaled a proactive new phase in China's engagement with Libya's future. The move is a further step away from China's traditional insistence on not interfering in the internal affairs of other nations and privileging intergovernmental relations. Yet there are reminders of a not-too-distant past when Maoist China had extensive contacts with rebels around the globe. Now, China is testing out new responses and possibilities for conflict mediation while also looking to secure its own interests, whatever the outcome in Libya.

China showed considerable flexibility in the first phase of the Libyan crisis. It had countrymen to secure -- more than 35,000 Chinese nationals were trapped during the uprising -- and significant commercial interests to protect. China voted for the U.N. Security Council's first resolution on the crisis, which slapped sanctions on Moammar Gadhafi for abuses against his own people and referred the Libyan leader and his top aides to the International Criminal Court.

In addition to the desire to protect Chinese assets in Libya, the determined push by Chinese partners in the African Union and the Arab League for an international response was another crucial factor in Beijing's willingness to vote in favor of the initial U.N. response.

Despite that initial engagement, China subsequently abstained on the second U.N. resolution authorizing a military intervention and no-fly zone in Libya. In so doing, Beijing reverted to its traditional more cautious stance. China licked the wounds of losing out on more than $18 billion in investments, combined with the costs of its impressive rescue mission of Chinese nationals, while maintaining a silence that for a time seemed to suggest that it would stay on in its role as the "premature" great power.

Yet as Gadhafi's forces continue to pound rebel strongholds in the vicinity of Misrata, Chinese diplomacy has taken an unexpected turn. The first indication was the meeting in Qatar between Zhang Zhiliang, the Chinese ambassador to Qatar, and Mustapha Abdul-Jalil, the Libyan opposition leader, reported in early June. It reflected a newfound Chinese interest in connecting with potential future leaders of a post-Gadhafi Libya.  

Last week, China ventured further, sending diplomats from its embassy in Cairo to the Libyan rebels' capital, Benghazi. An official Chinese statement explained that the mission's aims were to maintain "contact with the National Transitional Council" and "gain an understanding of the humanitarian situation and the situation for Chinese investing entities."

Meanwhile, hedging its bets on Libya's future, China received Gadhafi's envoy and foreign minister in Beijing. There the Chinese stated that it is Beijing's "top priority . . . to reach a ceasefire to avoid greater humanitarian disasters and solve the Libya crisis."

China is now establishing a new conflict-mediation profile in Libya, reflecting Beijing's pragmatic interest in making sure that, whoever shapes Libya's post-crisis future, China -- and, more importantly, its companies -- will be a part of that future. Still, the decision to become involved in such a dialogue marked a further move away from Beijing's traditional policy of noninterference, which is increasingly at odds with China's global economic presence.

China is learning that putting all its eggs in one basket is dangerous and that it needs broader contacts than just governmental ones. As a Chinese academic put it in conversation, "In 1979, we lost on dealing only with the Shah in Iran, in 1989 on Ceacescu's Romania when his rule crumbled, and in 1999 with Milosevic's Serbia. In 2011, China has got to be smarter." That new direction is already being tested in practice, in Libya but also elsewhere. For example, in the complicated mosaic of Pakistani power politics, China has started reaching out directly to political parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami. Similarly, China supported south Sudan's referendum on independence and even sent election observers for the voting in the beginning of the year and earlier also reached out to rebel groups in Darfur.

In fact, China's noninterference policy is not quite as age-old as one might think. During the Mao era -- when one of the party's many slogans was, "To rebel is justified" -- China supported communist revolutionary movements around the world with training camps and military support. Yet that support dwindled in the mid-1970s, and many of the movements whose names demonstrate an allegiance to China's revolutionary past, like the Maoists in Nepal or India, are now more a source of embarrassment to Beijing than a cause to support.

In Libya, China is again engaging with a rebel movement, although this time around, the driving factor behind that engagement is not ideology but the need to secure pragmatic Chinese interests. It also probably signals China's belief that it will not be long before a post-Gadhafi Libya emerges. For the world, though, it means that China will once again begin to meddle in internal affairs and play a larger role in conflict mediation -- all on its own terms.

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The meeting last week between China's ambassador to Qatar and the head of Libya's opposition movem ...
rhapsody 发表于 2011-6-16 01:08

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