23887: Slavin: (News) China, a new player for peace in Haiti (Newsday 121304) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

from: jps390@aol.com

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wohait12,0,6192864.story?coll=ny-world-big-pix

China, a new player for peace in Haiti

BY REED LINDSAY
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti --  Less than nine years ago, China used its weight in the United Nations Security Council to try to scuttle a peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

Now, in the latest sign of a new willingness to assume the role of a world leader, China has joined the latest UN mission to this violence-torn nation. In September and October, it sent 125 riot-control police to Haiti in what amounts to its most important contribution to a peacekeeping force ever.

"This is part of a move we've been seeing for the last two decades as China tries to become a world power and also a respected member of the international community," said Merle Goldman, an associate at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. "What makes this unprecedented is that the Chinese are asserting their role as a peacekeeping power within what we consider the American sphere of influence."

Trading inaction for action

In the past, China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has been criticized for not participating in peacekeeping missions based on its policy of non-interference in other countries. But recently it has become more active in international affairs, hosting six-party negotiations on North Korea's nuclear weapons program and last month signing a landmark free trade pact with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

China has sent several small contingents to UN peacekeeping missions, including East Timor, Liberia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, but they have usually consisted of specialized personnel, such as engineers or doctors, and never a complete riot-control police unit.

So far, however, more than two months after joining the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known as Minustah, the Chinese riot police have not seen any riots. Burdened with the formidable task of converting a filthy, leaky old factory into a spic-and-span, self-contained barracks, they have spent more time fending off mosquitoes and the searing Caribbean heat on construction duty than facing off against dangerous armed gangs.

Their commander, Zhao Xiaoxun, chuckled recently as he surveyed the activities of his contingent. His deputy lifted buckets of murky water out of a concrete underground tank and his explosives expert, shirtless, heaved boxes full of woks, noodles and other kitchen supplies from a shipping container onto a fork lift. Zhao, who before coming to Haiti was chief of China's 125,000 riot-control police, is no stranger to responsibility. But here he has been as much construction foreman as peacekeeping commander.

"These are China's best police, and look what they're doing," joked Zhao, a Beijing native who studied criminal justice at the University of California, Los Angeles.

An assignment of isolation

Prohibited from leaving the camp except when on a patrol or an official errand, the Chinese officers -- as is often the case with peacekeepers -- have had little contact with the local police and even less with the people. Nearly everything in their camp has been brought from China in 27 giant shipping containers, including portable toilets and walls for barracks. Except for vegetables and meat, which they buy at American-style supermarkets that cater to foreigners and Haiti's tiny elite, they brought their food from China, too.

"I hope I have the chance to get out of the camp and learn more about the Haitian people," said Han Yiqiu, 33, a police inspector from Tianjin. "We hear many gunshots every day and people here are very poor. I hope we can do something for them." Gunfights and police raids, not riots or protests, have dominated the landscape of Haiti's political conflict in recent weeks. Under orders from the Brazilian-led Minustah command, the Chinese contingent so far has stayed at the fringes of the violence that has racked Port-au-Prince.

The mission to Haiti is the first time China has sent a self-contained peacekeeping force, and the first time it has participated in a UN mission in Latin America, a region long seen as the backyard of the United States. It also has been involved in trade with countries in the region in recent years. Last month, Chinese President Hu Jintao announced $30 billion in new investments in Latin America during a 12-day trip to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Cuba.

"We want to contribute to the world and participate in peace issues," said Ping Li, 41, who was with the East Timor mission and is now overseeing the mission in Haiti for China's Ministry of Public Security. "If this first riot-police unit can perform successfully and smoothly, then there is the possibility of a second one."

Some see ulterior motives in China's peacekeeping contribution, including Taiwan, which has maintained relations with Haiti since 1956.

"The PRC says it wants to play a major role in the world with more responsibility, but there is always something behind that," said Hsieh Hsin-Ping, the Taiwanese ambassador to Haiti. "[The Chinese] will exploit every opportunity to destroy relations between Taiwan and its diplomatic allies." He added, however, that "there is no indication" China is using the Haitian mission to pressure the Caribbean nation to break relations with Taiwan.

Thirteen countries in Latin America including Haiti recognize Taiwan, nearly half of all those in the world.

In 1996, China pressured the United Nations to end a peacekeeping force in Haiti after Taiwan Vice President Li Yuan-zu attended the inauguration of then-Haitian President Rene Preval. Canada ended up saving the mission by offering to pay for the entire peacekeeping force of 700 officers, but not before China alienated much of the developing world. Even Cuba joined other Latin American countries in denouncing China's efforts to sink the UN mission.

This time around, China is actively participating. "It seems to be part of the idea to establish China's credentials as a good citizen of the world," said June Teufel Dreyer, a professor at the University of Miami and a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. "The phrase the Chinese government uses is peacefully rising, which tries to counter some people's fears that China is becoming a threat as its military grows larger."

She added, however, that "anyone who really thinks that China's participation in peacekeeping missions is just a way of being a good citizen of the world is kidding themselves." Other countries with peacekeepers in Haiti are Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Some analysts say the relatively small size of the Chinese contingent -- which represents only 1.5 percent of the total number of UN troops and police in Haiti -- and the fact it is under UN auspices poses no threat to U.S. dominance in the region and will do little to convince Haiti to sever ties with Taiwan.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.


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J.P. Slavin
New York
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