Beijing's peacemaking efforts in South Sudan
6 November 2014
Zhong Jianhua, China’s Special Representative for African Affairs, is in
many ways surprisingly candid and disarming. In a recent interview with
Independent Newspapers, Zhong, China’s previous ambassador to South Africa,
happily acknowledged the deficiencies in China’s understanding of the South
Sudan conflict, which is the current focus of his attention.
He rebuked China’s African scholars for this deficiency and said they had
now been set to work to make up the deficit. But it would still take China
‘decades’ to close the knowledge gap with other countries interested in
Africa.
Given China’s dominant engagement with Africa over the last decade or so –
and the disquiet that has caused among global competitors – this was quite a
humble admission.
The more striking thing about Zhong’s interview was his description of his
‘pretty dramatic’ first meeting with the South Sudanese opposition – the
Riek Machar rebels within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), who
had fallen out with President Salva Kiir – after the civil war erupted in
Juba in December last year.
To most diplomats, meeting both sides in a conflict would be standard
practice. But not to China.
‘I think for the last two or three decades we were quite rigid about
non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries,’ Zhong
explained. In such a typical domestic conflict, ‘we try to avoid making
direct contact with the opposition… When you talk to a rebel force that
means stepping into internal affairs.’
But his foreign minister, Wang Yi, decided this time China should act
differently – based on the undertaking which then president Hu Jintao had
given at the ministerial conference of the Forum for China Africa
Cooperation (FOCAC) in Bejing in 2012.
‘President Hu Jintao on behalf of the Chinese government pledged that we
will do more in the field of stability and peace on this continent … on the
basis that we understand that sometimes this is also crucial to the
development of the continent. And so we need to contribute also in this
field. This was the first time our leaders talked about doing something on
peace and security for Africa.
'So this is the time when we need to fulfil what we have promised. We start
to talk to different parties with the encouragement of IGAD, [the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which is
<
http://www.issafrica.org/iss-today/south-sudan-crisis-is-there-hope-for-a-d
urable-solution> the organisation of states in northeast Africa supervising
the South Sudan peace talks] with the agreement of the South Sudan
government.’
One of Zhong’s aides hastened to correct the journalist interviewing Zhong
when he referred to this new approach as a ‘change of policy.’ The aide
pointed that there had been no change in policy as Beijing had now simply
realised that tackling conflicts had become necessary for advancing
Beijing’s historical policy of promoting African development.
This rather tortured explanation recalled China’s more familiar euphemistic
justification of its aggressively pro-market economic policies of the last
30 years as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ Such linguistic
contortion is the price of attempting to maintain ideological consistency
while adapting to changing realities. A small price to pay, it would seem.
Because apparently this new approach paid off – though only to a degree, at
least as Zhong described it. He said he had given a stern lecture to the
then still-united SPLM about the need about the need to resume oil
production, which it had stopped over a dispute with Khartoum regarding its
tariff for pumping the oil to its harbour for export.
Zhong told them to put the interest of their people before their own, at
times invoking the example of Mao Tse-tung to support his case.
And he gave a similar lecture to the Machar rebels after the split in
December last year, urging them not to attack the oilfields, as the revenue
they produced would be vital to the recovery of the country after the
conflict, no matter who was in charge. The rebels had already completely
destroyed one of the oil fields.
In both cases they seemed to listen to him, and he believes the advice he
gave was the more persuasive coming from China than it would have been from
Western governments. Of course it just happened that China had substantial
investment in the oilfields, and about 300 of its workers in South Sudan are
still running them.
So it was also protecting its own interests. Yet Zhong is not implausible
when he insists that if Beijing were only looking to its own interests, it
would probably have pulled its oil workers out for their own safety. To
China, the oil revenue represented a drop in the ocean, whereas to South
Sudan it was a matter of life and death because it produced about 97% of the
new country’s revenue, he explained.
Zhong also described how China has begun
<
http://www.issafrica.org/publications/papers/between-a-rock-and-a-hard-plac
e-the-un-and-the-protection-of-civilians-in-south-sudan> deepening its
involvement in UN peacekeeping operations in Africa, sending actual
peacekeepers to Mali and South Sudan whereas in the past it had largely
confined itself to contributing just medical and engineering units to such
missions. Zhong also did not rule out the possibility of China providing
airlift to deploy African rapid response troops under the new African
Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises, though he said that decision
would clearly have to be made much higher up the hierarchy.
And China also seems to have had a change of heart on arms sales to South
Sudan. Beijing has been criticised more broadly for selling weapons,
particularly small arms, to several countries in Africa. But Bloomberg
reported in September that a Chinese embassy official in Juba said Beijing
had halted weapons sales to South Sudan after it had discovered that the
state arms manufacturer, China North Industries Group Corp. (Norinco), had
delivered a $38 million consignment of arms to South Sudan in June this
year.
The Chinese government decided it was ‘inappropriate to implement’ the
remainder of the contract after details of the order came to light in July,
said Lan Kun, an attaché at the Chinese Embassy in South Sudan’s capital,
Juba, adding that ‘no more weapons are heading to South Sudan.’
So it seems that China’s involvement in African peacemaking and peacekeeping
efforts is evolving in an open-ended way. However one defines this new
approach, it would seem that Africa is pulling China – historically allergic
to any kind of interference in the internal affairs of other states –
towards a more interventionist policy.
When the African Union was launched in 2002, its founding document
significantly amended the Organisation of African Unity charter by
authorising interference in the internal affairs of member states in extreme
circumstances. This made it difficult for China to lag behind. How could it
justify being at odds with the very continent and countries it was so
committed to helping?
One of the intriguing questions that arises from this new approach/policy,
name it what you will – let’s call it ‘non-interference with Chinese
characteristics’ – is how it might reflect backwards into China itself. The
underlying reason for China’s aversion to interference in the internal
affairs of other states, it has always been assumed, is to avoid setting a
dangerous precedent for interference in its own internal affairs.
Now that China itself has started changing that example abroad, will it come
under pressure to change it at home too?
Peter Fabricius, Foreign Editor, Independent Newspapers, South Africa
Received on Thu Nov 06 2014 - 09:16:05 EST