Factors Influencing China’s Participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations

Leveraging a new panel dataset and engaging in a systemic, Large-N analysis of China’s participation in the UN peacekeeping operations (UNPKOs), this study reveals the key factors that influence China’s two-step decision-making process. The first step is to decide whether to participate in a UNPKO or not, largely an effect of the interaction between the geographical region of the host country and the conditions of US-China relations. Specifically, China was less likely to participate in UNPKOs in Europe and in the Americas before 2001 and after 2012 when US-China relations were tense, and China was more likely to participate between 2001 and 2012 when US-China relations were good. The second step is to decide how many peacekeepers to contribute to a UNPKO, largely an effect of China following both a logic of consequences and a logic of appropriateness. Specifically, the host country’s importance as a source of Chinese imports and as a source of a large proportion of refugees positively influences the number of peacekeepers China deploys to a UNPKO. These findings indicate that the goals of Chinese foreign policy have gradually moved beyond emphasizing its narrow self-interests and have become much more comprehensive, expanding to provide global security public goods.