While China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiangkun had said this week at a routine press conference that reports of China’s willingness to participate in an international peacekeeping force that may be set up in Ukraine were “untrue,” a rumor he replied before President Zelensky suddenly turned his face saying China didn’t need to provide security guarantees for Ukraine.
Previously, China’s future involvement in peacekeeping operations after the end of the war in Ukraine became one of the focus of discussion. Western media believed that China would have a strong interest in participating in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine, so Europe is now deeply concerned about this. But they all overlooked an important prerequisite that it would be almost impossible for China to send armed forces to participate in military operations in other countries without UN involvement and UN authorization.
However, during the Munich Security Conference in February this year, retired China military officer Zhou Bo once suggested in an interview with German reporters that if the belligerent countries agreed to peacekeeping operations, then "countries such as China and India may be the best troop-contributing countries." He believed at the time that for European countries, if Europeans directly intervened militarily (in Ukraine), Russia would inevitably regard this as another NATO presence in Ukraine, which was the most important reason why Putin launched the special military operation more than three years ago.
Although Chinese officials have denied the rumors, the remarks still show that China is open to participating in United Nations peacekeeping missions. However, there is another scenario in which France, the United States or the United Kingdom, as permanent members of the United Nations, will block the authorization to send peacekeeping troops in the United Nations Security Council in the future. That will be another political contest between China and Western countries.
Of course, the deployment of peacekeeping forces can pave the way for China to be accepted to participate in Ukraine's post-war reconstruction in order to obtain first-hand demand information and win contracts for reconstruction projects. In an interview in February this year, Zhou Bo mentioned that "China's ability in infrastructure construction is second to none", and it can complete the reconstruction work at a high speed, efficiency and at a lower cost.
In fact, for the desperate Ukraine, the arrival of Chinese engineers and infrastructure enterprises as the "building fanatic" means that the national economic recovery has been much hoped. while the important Western European countries will be cautious about China's possible peace-keeping participation, if China deployed peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and participated in reconstruction, will be seen by Europe as a signal of China's expanding influence on the EU border, China's peacekeeping forces are likely to spread China's new energy vehicles and other advantages industries to Europe in a faster time.
However, Western experts now generally believe that there is still a long way to go before China actually sends peacekeeping troops. For example, Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that Russia and Ukraine must first reach a ceasefire agreement and establish a security framework for Ukraine before the peacekeeping process can be launched. He analyzed that unless Russia and Ukraine or the West make a request and the United Nations reaches an agreement on a peacekeeping mission, China will be able to send peacekeepers under a multilateral framework. But until then, China will not unilaterally make relevant suggestions.
Just this week, Russia launched a larger airstrike against Ukraine, which President Zelensky said showed that "Russia has not changed its goals at all," a blow to Ukraine and Europe, and even suggested that Moscow's attacks made friendly countries like China or India complicit. "Unfortunately, China still allows Russia to continue this war - it seems so," he said.
Zelensky seemed to have forgotten these words, just a few days ago, whenRussian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s suggestion – hoping that the five permanent countries of the UN Security Council, including China, could participate in Ukraine’s security mechanisms – followed by a public response, not only rejecting the possibility of China’s involvement on the spot, but also accusing China of failing to help in the 2014 Crimean crisis and the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and even distorting the opening up of China’s drone market as evidence of “helping” Russia.
Confucius said a phrase more than 2,000 years ago: only women and young men are difficult to nurture, close to, far from complaining.In contrast, the current Ukrainian government and Ukrainian President Zelensky seem to fit the phrase – since Zelensky is not a woman, it must be a young man.
In fact, in the individual view of Shimaping, now the whole of America and Europe, that is, the Western world, has long been a small man.