China and the International Human Protection Regime:
Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order
Rosemary Foot, University of Oxford
Introduction
The 21st Century has witnessed both a deepening of scholarly and policy interest innorms associated with human protection, as well as the creation of a number ofglobal, mostly UN-associated, institutions designed to enhance protective capacity.
Academic appraisal of actions intended to promote humanitarian outcomes has
mushroomed. Debate and discussion of topics such as the protection of civilians inarmed conflict, the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), or modes of accountability formass atrocity crimes appear regularly on UN agendas. This includes the UN
Security Council, which debates these protections in the context of its primarymandate to respond to threats to international peace and security. The Security
Council’s understanding of how global insecurity is generated has noticeably
widened since the 1990s, and many resolutions dealing with humanitarian disasters
have been passed under mandatory Chapter VII UN Charter provisions.
Beijing’s recently enhanced material power, together with its steadily increasing
willingness to provide global public goods, makes it essential to study its approaches
to these issues. These developments in China’s place in the global system requireconsideration of the extent to which the Chinese leadership might be using Beijing’s
increased influence to shape the UN’s agenda in this normative area, or insteadwhether such global norms have any capacity to shape a more powerful China’s
behaviour. Such questions are additionally important to consider at a time when thepost 1945 liberal international order appears to be weakening.
Certainly, China has significantly increased its potential to shape the normativearchitecture of global governance: it has slowly gained better representation and agreater voice in governance arrangements. It has decided to be more vocal than in
the past in articulating what it regards as both the responsibilities that this new statuscarries as well as the benefits that successfully initiated multilateral institutional
policies bring to the legitimation of its new global role. Indeed, China has beensteadily moving away from an argument that emphasized its developing country
status and material inadequacies towards one where it has come to accept, under Xi,
that its status as the second largest economy in the world has conferred upon it a
new social role that carries “special responsibilities” to sustain global order.1
However, despite this potential for influence, its greater material power, andapparently growing sense of responsibility, the issue area of human protection is oneof particular challenge for China. The Chinese government articulates a basic

1 For a general discussion of these matters of responsibility see Mlada Bukovansky, et al, Special

Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20171

commitment to maintenance of a pluralist state-based order and is resistant to theerosion of the principle of non-interference in internal affairs, except under certain
narrowly defined circumstances. The human protection regime challenges these
beliefs. Indeed, it involves normative contestation at the global level of aparticularly fundamental kind since it pits the security of the individual against the
sanctity and security of the state-based international system. It appeals touniversalist principles at a time when China seems more determined to protect
pluralism and difference.
Furthermore, global institutional developments in the field of human protection
represents a policy area of considerable domestic salience to China since this area
not only touches directly on matters of state sovereignty and non-interference, butalso on state-society relations. Norms that are of high domestic salience to China
have been found most likely to make progress in circumstances where theycorrespond closely with domestic norms2 – a proposition that necessitates a close
examination of the content of the domestic values that the Chinese elite holds andwishes to protect.
At the same time, China’s status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council,
the impressive enhancement in its material power, and recognition that, as a great
power, it has a responsibility to contribute to the global commons in order tolegitimate that great power status implies that it cannot ignore these normative
developments. 3 As the Chinese government itself noted in its 2005 UN reform
document, “when a massive humanitarian crisis occurs, it is the legitimate concernof the international community to ease and defuse the crisis.”4 The puzzle related toquestions of status, therefore, is how can Beijing both shape this normative regime
in such a way that is seen by significant others as appropriate and helpful to thenorm’s progression, and that at the same time does not validate the regime’s
underlying values where they come into conflict with the beliefs the Chinese
government wishes to see promoted and protected?
By beliefs, I am referring to those ideas that derive from China’s historical, culturaland ideological experiences and as they bear on global humanitarian action. In termsof status, I focus on its concerns to reflect and project itself as a responsible great
power through normative engagement. This is not to suggest that there is a directtranslation between these beliefs and status concerns into policy outcomes. The
beliefs need to be thought of as both legacies as well as political resources that canbe sparingly or expansively deployed in these new international circumstances. In
addition, we should expect to find a mediated version of these beliefs via the
2 Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter, China, the United States and Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2011).
3 Bukovansky, et al, Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power, (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2012).
4 “Position Paper of the People’s Republic of China on the United Nations Reforms,” 7 June 2005.

Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20172

concern with responsible great power status as the leadership moves frompreferences to actual policy. Nevertheless, the argument is that both beliefs andstatus provide a valuable route to understanding China’s relationship with normative
developments in the UN-related human protection regime, and more broadly help us
to assess China’s relationship with these especially challenging aspects of the global
normative order.
In what follows, I define what is meant by the human protection regime, outline theimportance of the China case to the fate of this normative agenda, provide somedetail on the nature of China’s belief system as it relates to humanitarian action,suggest how matters of status intersect with those beliefs, before finally and briefly
attempting to apply some of these ideas to two areas of China’s involvement withthe human protection regime.
The Human Protection Regime Defined
The elements that make up this developing regime share a concern to protect
populations from wide-scale abuses including genocide and other mass atrocities. In
a speech at the University of Oxford in February 2011, UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon, described the protection regime as “a subset of the more encompassing
concept of human security” that “addresses more immediate threats to the survivalof individuals and groups.”5 Alex Bellamy, more than any other scholar, has worked
to delineate the components of this “emerging normative architecture,” and has
pointed to “the Responsibility to Protect (R2P); the UN Security Council’s
protection of civilians agenda and changing peacekeeping practices; thedevelopment of the International Criminal Court; discrete agendas focusing on
Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Children in Armed Conflict; the further
entrenchment of human rights law and international humanitarian law, and theadoption of protection as a core mandate of a variety of international organizations
and NGOs.” 6 Other elements could be added, perhaps, such as the international
refugee regime and the expansion in its agenda of protection.
The Importance of the China Case to the Protection Regime
Of the rising or so-called emerging powers, China is in many respects in a class of
its own in its ability to shape the global normative environment. China’s resurgencehas been particularly apparent since its membership of the World Trade
Organization in 2001, a rise that in turn spawned the international and to somedegree the domestic expectation that China should contribute more fully to theprovision of global public goods.7 Moreover, since 2013, it has had a President that
5 Un Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, “Human Protection and the 21st Century United Nations”, 2 February

2011, at http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/search_full.asp?statID=1064.
6 Alex J. Bellamy, “The Changing Face of Humanitarian Intervention,” St Antony’s International Review, 11:1,

2015, pp. 15-43, at p. 16.
7 As President Obama put it in November 2009, he welcomed China’s greater role, “a role in which a growing

economy is joined by growing responsibilities.” Quoted in Bukovansky, et al, Special Responsibilities, p. 1. For
Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20173

appears more willing than his predecessors to accept the obligations that greater
economic and political clout have imposed on the country.
In many respects China’s great power identity has begun to outstrip that of its
developing country identity. Latterly, for example, Beijing has appeared to takemore seriously its special status as permanent member of the UN Security Council.
While it remains a middle-income country, nevertheless it has the second largest
economy in the world together with the second largest defence budget. It offers aid
and investment to many states around the globe and more than one hundred
countries count it as their leading trading partner. Though China’s real GDP growth
rates have declined from 10.4% in 2010 to 6.7% in 2016, and there are many
weaknesses in its economy still to be confronted, let alone overcome, it has a large
and growing middle class. The World Bank estimates that between 1981 and 2010,
679 million people in China were raised out of extreme poverty (that is a daily
income of less than $1.25 per day)8 and Chinese scholars and officials often point tothis success when advocating the important lessons that can be learned from China’s
own developmental experience.9
The evidence of China’s great power identity, together with its remaining underlying
developmental weaknesses, have sparked a scholarly and policy debate in China
over the last few years about whether the government should start to play a more
active global role.10 This has been a lengthy debate among Chinese elites not least
because the revered former leader and architect of the ‘Reform and Opening’ policy,
Deng Xiaoping, was associated with the taoguang yanghui formulation. This
formulation advocated that China should stand back internationally – should ‘bide
its time’ and ‘hide its brightness’ -- when dealing with international matters in orderto maintain a sharp focus on its paramount domestic economic development agenda.

the most-frequently-referenced American statement, see Robert Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State,“Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility? Remarks to National Committee on U.S.-China
Relations,” New York, September 21, 2005.
8 The World Bank, World DataBank, Poverty and Inequality Database.
9 See e.g. He Yafei, (Vice-Minister of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council), “A Proactive

Approach to Global Governance is China’s Historic Choice,” China Quarterly of International Strategic
Studies, Vol. 1:2, July 2015, p. 197.
10 Shaun Breslin, “China and the global order: signaling threat or friendship?” International Affairs, 89:3,

May 2013, esp. pp. 619-24; David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: the Partial Power (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013) pp. 18-20; Pichamon Yeophantong, “Governing the World: China’s Evolving
Conceptions of Responsibility,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, 6:4, 2013, pp. 329-64; Wang
Yizhou, “China’s new foreign policy: transformations and challenges reflected in changing discourse,” The
Asan Forum, 2:2, March-April 2014, at http://www.theasanforum.org/archives/march-april-2014/
Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20174

Eventually, the debate began to coalesce around an argument that reflected China’s
new great power identity. Some scholars averred that even when Beijing’s interests
were not directly engaged, China should take on global roles that reflected its great
power status, taking the opportunity at the same time to promote its own values
rather than acquiescing in or adopting those prominent in the West.
Professor Wang Yizhou of Peking University, for example, advocated a relaxationof the strict principle China had erstwhile adopted of non-interference in a country’s
internal affairs, in favour of what he termed “creative involvement”: that is, China
should “proactively and voluntarily participate in the discussion and resolution ofregional and international issues”, as well as provide the “institutions, assistance andglobal public goods that can benefit people throughout the world.”11
A number of the developments associated with the evolving human protection norm
occurred when Presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao led China. While they
maintained rather close adherence to Deng’s admonition that China should remainchary of assuming prominent global leadership positions, they also recognized
China’s role in the UN Security Council as “an important responsibility forsafeguarding world peace and stability”. 12 However, greater ambition has been amarked feature of the Xi Jinping era and he, undoubtedly, has shaped the directionof this more recent scholarly debate about China’s world role. In conversation withthen UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, in June 2013 President Xi promised
more Chinese effort to promote the “peaceful settlement of international disputes,
support the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, work with other parties to tackle
climate change and make more contributions toward world peace and humandevelopment.” 13 Notably, in a deliberate link between Chinese power and theobligations that came with that power, Xi informed the Secretary General that heunderstood that China, “As a permanent member of the UN Security Council” had“heavy responsibilities to assume”, adding that Beijing had “the capability to assume
them.”14
China and Humanitarianism: beliefs and status
What then are those Chinese beliefs that appear to be shaping its responses to thishuman protection regime and the demands that regime makes on those states that are
accorded special privileges in the global system? Four dimensions seem pertinent:(1) classical Chinese political thought including Confucian ideas of statecraft, (2)China’s colonial history including the post-1911 Republican order, (3) the Maoist or
Marxist-influenced political system in place after 1949, and finally (4) the perceived
success of its developmental experience particularly since Reform and Opening in
11 “New Direction for China’s Diplomacy,” interview with Wang Yizhou, BeijingReview.com.cn, 8 March

2012, at http://www.bjreview.com.cn/world/txt/2012-03/05/content_439626.htm#.
12 Yeophantong, “Governing the World”, p. 331, quoting President Jiang Zemin.
13 “Chinese President meets UN Chief,” Xinhua, 20 June 2013.
14 “Chinese President Meets UN Chief”.

Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20175

late 1978.15 Culture, historical experience, and ideology are reflected in these four
dimensions, but importantly they each point in a similar direction and reinforce theargument that priority has to be given to building a strong state in order to advancehuman protection.
Undoubtedly, this conclusion could be seen to relate primarily to the Chinese
government’s desire to protect its own one-party rule, an argument that obviously
has merit. However, that explanation is too narrow and incomplete: it cannot tell us
what specific policies the Chinese government would choose in response todevelopments in any of the various components of this protection regime, and it fails
to distinguish between those parts of the regime that are perceived to threaten the
CCP’s core interests and those that may instead advance some aspects of thoseinterests.
First, classical ideas, which stress the unity between state and society, have playedand continue to play an important role in shaping Beijing’s responses tohumanitarian crises. China’s government may indeed use Confucian thought
strategically in the contemporary era, but Confucian and other traditional
philosophical ideas resonate in ways that reduce the tension between
instrumentalism and belief.
The traditional belief that it is the “state rather than the individual that is the locus of
moral agency and the subject of moral duty” reinforces an official sense that it is thestate itself that needs to be protected in order that it can provide for its citizenry intime of need.16 Imperial tradition dictated the prime goals of the emperor to be “topreside over a stable and harmonious order”. 17 If the emperor was deemed
responsible for his people’s well-being, the converse was also true: were the people
to fall into peril, then the mandate of heaven needed to be removed and the emperor
replaced. As Yeophantong puts it, “The ruler’s capability to cater to the interests ofthe people, in other words, became a tangible measure of that ruler’s legitimacy,
with the building of society’s material foundations proving important in thisregard.”18 A well-ordered and stable state was, then, viewed as critical to establish
and would guarantee harmony between the centre and its people, as well as between
the centre and its “peripheral neighbours” (to use a Chinese phrase).
Modern day reiterations and extensions of that argument appear frequently in
Chinese official discourse. Liu Tiewa and Zhang Haibin note the former Foreign
Minister, Yang Jiechi’s, view that the “healthy and powerful and sovereign state” is

15 In particular, I am drawing on and extending Miwa Hirono’s work here. See references below.
16 Miwa Hirono, “Three Legacies of Humanitarianism in China,” Disasters, 37 (S2), 2013.
17 Vivienne Shue, “Legitimacy Crisis in China?” in State and Society in 21st Century China: Crisis, Contention,and Legitimation, edited by Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 31.
18 Yeophantong, “Governing the World,” pp. 336-7.

Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20176

not only “beneficial to the stability, good governance and balanced development of acountry” but also vital to the health of international society.19
Secondly, China shares with a number of other developing countries the experienceof imperial exploitation and encroachment. This has spurred its support for a
Westphalian interpretation of state sovereignty and the sovereign equality of states,
its reluctance to move from a strict interpretation of Article 2(7) of the UN Charter
that references non-interference in the domestic jurisdiction of states, and askepticism with regard to the presumed impartiality of international law. As thehistorian Rana Mitter has put it: “It is understandable why sovereignty looms solarge: after all, almost every incursion onto Chinese soil between 1839 and 1945 wasbased on some interpretation of international law, however dubious: the opium wars,
the refusal to return German colonies to Chinese sovereignty at the Paris peace
conference, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.” 20 In a contemporaryinternational system that some Chinese commentators, such as Sheng Hongsheng,
describe as emphasizing coercive rather than consensus-based relationships, the fearis that the “’sovereignty priority’” will be replaced with a “’human rights priority’”under which “international criminal law uses its sharp swords to pierce through the‘last layer of armor’ that is state sovereignty.”21
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist beliefs similarly reinforce the kinds of ideas that Sheng,quoted earlier, endorses and especially the sense that normative ideas or legal rules,
like human rights, have a class character. In Mao’s China, human rights orhumanitarian action were essentially depicted as tools of the bourgeoisie anddesigned to “cover up class contradictions, and to deceive the proletariat and theworking people.”22 Rights were not to be claimed against the state, but were grantedby it. As Red Flag, the Chinese Communist Party journal, put it, “human rights arenot ‘heaven given,’ they are given and regulated by the state and by law; they are
not universal, but have a clear class nature; they are not abstract or concrete; they are
not absolute but limited by law and morality.”23
Finally, following the advent of “Reform and Opening” under Deng Xiaoping andsubsequent leaders, the Party-State has given priority to economic development and
19 Liu Tiewa and Zhang Haibin, “Debates in China about the Responsibility to Protect as a Developing

International Norm: A General Assessment”, Conflict, Security and Development, 14:4, 2014, p. 411.
20 Rana Mitter, “An Uneasy Engagement: Chinese Ideas of Global Order and Justice in Historical

Perspective,” in Rosemary Foot, John Lewis Gaddis, and Andrew Hurrell (eds.,) Order and Justice inInternational Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 222.
21 Sheng Hongsheng, “China in the Post-World War II International Legal System,” in China Quarterly ofInternational Strategic Studies, 1:2, p. 209.
22 Wen Yi Bao, quoted in Hirono, “Three Legacies”, p. S208.
23 Quoted in Sarah Teitt, R2P IDEAS in brief, p. 3. See also Kent, Between Freedom and Subsistence: China

and Human Rights, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20177

developed the idea of socialist humanitarianism. To some degree, they could be said
to be drawing on the ideas of Republican leader Sun Yatsen who developed theconcept of the “People’s Livelihood” and argued that it was critical to provide the“Four Great Necessities” of food, clothing, shelter and means of travel with the helpof both state and international capital. Contemporary official Chinese attitudes tohuman rights similarly emphasize the need for China and other states to provide forthese basic material needs.
In more recent times, President Hu Jintao has looked further back for inspiration andhas linked the search for sustainable development to Confucian ideas. His aim tobuild a “harmonious society” was projected as a response to some of the social ills
that China’s development model had generated. The next Chinese President, Xi
Jinping, downplayed the idea of societal harmony placing greater weight on
resurrecting the notion of the “China Dream” and the “great rejuvenation of theChinese nation” as the source of domestic unity. These formulations are associatedwith making China an all-round developed and prosperous society by 2049 under
the guidance of a revitalized and purified Communist Party. Realisation of the China
dream requires the Party-State to work to spread the goals of China’s development
successes across the country, especially to China’s western regions,24 to bring theremaining tens of millions out of absolute poverty, and to reinforce their bonds with
the Party-led political system.
China, Humanitarianism and the International Status of a Responsible State
However, while these beliefs are powerfully held, global norms also retain theability to constrain, and particularly to constrain those states that care about status in
global politics.25 According to Yong Deng (though his point is arguable), China’s
sensitivity to matters of status is “unparalleled” in the global system. 26 And
Pichamon Yeophantong has shown how concern with appearing responsible has along and deep tradition in Chinese statecraft. 27 This results in a paradox that
confronts the Chinese leadership. As Ian Clark has rightly noted, if China seeks
recognition as a responsible great power that is deserving of a role in shaping global
norms, it must first show itself to be a willing and constructive participant in theextant global order. 28 That participation in itself restricts China’s policy options,influences external perceptions of its social status, and has some capacity to realignits domestic beliefs.

24 Hirono, “Three Legacies,” p. S208.
25 Alastair Iain Johnston, Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000 (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2007).
26 Deng, China’s Struggle for Status, p. 9.
27 Yeophantong, “Governing the World.”
28 Ian Clark, “International Society and China: the Power of Norms and the Norms of Power”, The Chinese

Journal of International Politics 7: 3, 2014, pp. 315-40.
Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20178

Indeed, there is some evidence that China has tried to link its domestic beliefs andtheir relationship with humanitarian outcomes at the domestic and international
levels in ways that bolster its international status. President Hu’s “harmonious
society” was linked to the idea of a “harmonious world” and enunciated largely as apossible alternative to the conflictual world the US government had brought into
being through its intervention in Iraq in 2003. The “China Dream” and “rejuvenation”
associated so strongly with Xi Jinping carries within those terms the promise that
China’s reemergence as a great power deserving of respect by other great powers
legitimates its role as a model for others. As He Yafei has argued, the China model
ought to be emulated: its success in reducing poverty implies that “China has a great
deal to offer in regard to its development experiences.” It can provide “roadmaps forother developing nations engaged in the same endeavor.”29
More obviously, since the global financial crisis of 2008, China has coupled theperceived need to spread what it depicts as the human benefits of its development
model 30 with the provision of what Xi and his officials refer to as global andregional public goods. China’s overseas development assistance, as well as its rolein UN peace operations and vital contributions to the UN peace operations budget
are projected as major contributions to humanitarian work in other countries. Beijing
proudly repeats that it provides more peacekeeping troops than all the other P5
members combined, and notes UN Secretary general Ban Ki-Moon’s comments
praising this “solidarity” with the UN. 31 Similarly, the “One Belt, One Road”
initiative, with its emphasis on building infrastructure and enhancing connectivity,and underpinned by the China-created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, apartfrom its geo-strategic meaning, also represents a major vehicle for China to cement
the linkages between its deeply-rooted concept of humanitarianism and state-led
development.
Implications for the Human Protection Regime: R2P and Peacekeeping
Evidence of the influence of these ideas is apparent in the Chinese government’s
conduct towards two major dimensions of the human protection regime: theelaboration and implementation of R2P’s Three Pillar approach, and Beijing’s rolein UN peace operations.32 In both cases, it recognizes the need, as a P5 member andresponsible great power, to be involved with these matters. As others have noted,
Beijing’s participation in peacekeeping is valued in part because it allows the

29 He, “A Proactive Approach,” p. 197.
30 Zhang Weiwei, The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State(Hackensack, NJ.: World Century Publishing

Corp., 2012); The China Horizon: glory and dream of a civilizational state (Hackensack, NJ.: World Century
Publishing Corp., 2016).
31 UN News Centre, http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/print_full.asp?statID=1990.
32 For a more extended treatment of this argument see Foot, “The State, Development, andHumanitarianism: China’s Shaping of the Trajectory of R2P”, in Alex Bellamy and Tim Dunne (eds). The
Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 20179

country “to cultivate the image of a responsible great power, and cultivate the imageof [a] state which protects international peace.” 33 With respect to humanitariandisasters, it acknowledges the need for an international community response. 34
Notable too, however, is that it has also developed forms of involvement that
promote and reflect its dominant beliefs.
With respect to R2P, for example, China has been particularly vocal in placingemphasis on Pillar One – it is the “state’s responsibility to protect its citizens” fromthe four mass atrocity crimes identified in R2P as the trigger for some form ofaction.35 It also acknowledges the import of Pillar Two of R2P, which stresses the
responsibility of international actors to help states build the capacities that will aid astate’s efforts to prevent wide-scale abuse. On Pillar Three, which promisesinternational action of a more interventionist (though not necessarily coercive) kind,
Beijing remains circumspect. In any response to crises that might involve one ormore of the four crimes, China emphasizes the need for host state consent (or insome circumstances regional organizational consent) to international involvement.
What form should that capacity building take? Here we can find clues in the waythat China approaches UN peace operations or has described mass atrocity crimes
such as genocide in other countries. In response to the mass atrocities in Darfur,
China’s Special Envoy to the country described the “key problem” to tackle as alack of development and resultant poverty, rather than genocide. 36 With regard toUN peace operations, China does not involve itself in activities designed to promotea liberal democratic peace in war-torn societies but promotes instead the notion thatdevelopment – particular the building of infrastructure -- should be the central
element of peacebuilding. Here, its own experience post-Reform and Opening, plus
earlier imperial ideas on the relationship between rulers and led, as well as
Republican notions of the vital role that infrastructure plays in the development of amodern state, all perform important shaping roles. That China stays a long time once
it is committed to a peace operation also suggests that it views peacekeeping andpeacebuilding through the development lens. As Roy Kamphausen has noted, during
January to April 2013, China “sent its 15th peacekeeping engineer detachment to the[DRC], its 11th peacekeeping engineer battalion to Lebanon, its 16th PLA medical
team to Zambia, its 13th peacekeeping force to Liberia, and its 2nd peacekeeping task
force to South Sudan.”37

33 Shogo Suzuki, “Seeking ‘Legitimate’ Great Power Status in Post-Cold War International Society: China’s

and Japan’s Participation in UNPKO”, International Relations, 22:1, 2008, p. 56.
34 See footnote 4.
35 The four crimes are genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
36 Quoted in Liu Tiewa and Zhang Haibin, “Debates in China about the Responsibility to Protect as a

Development International Norm”, Conflict, Security and Development, 14:4, 2014, p. 15.
37

Roy D. Kamphausen, “China’s Military Operations other than War: The Military Legacy of Hu Jintao”, paper

presented in Stockholm for SIPRI, 18-19 April, 2013, p. 5.

Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
10
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 2017

For China, then, strengthening these forms of state capacity and contributing more
broadly to the development goals of states--as defined by the incumbent
government—is a route to peace, a way of building close state-society relations, anda key contribution to the prevention of wide-scale abuse. There is little if any
reflection in Beijing on what it means to build the capacity of a government in
power that might have been involved in gross violations of human rights. These
Chinese ideas leave little room for the protection of the individual, and show scantinterest in holding individuals accountable for acts of mass killing or egregious
violations of human rights. Instead, Beijing prefers to claim a mutually beneficial
relationship between the building of state capacity, social stability, and humanitarianoutcomes.
Conclusion
China under President Xi has made two major changes that are of significance to thefurther development of the international human protection regime. First, Xi appears
more decisive and, as confirmed at the 2014 4th Plenum meeting, as well as instatements made more recently, intends China to play a more active role in global
governance. Secondly, unlike his predecessors, he regards China’s contribution to
global order as coming primarily through advancement of a Chinese-style model ofdevelopment. Whereas Presidents Jiang and Hu saw that contribution as coming
predominantly from the fact that China’s rapid advancement did not disrupt, Xi’s isa more China-centred and self-regarding approach. In addition, it mattered to Jiang
and Hu that China be regarded as a responsible great power by significant others. In
the case of Xi, he appears to place more emphasis on China’s status as a power withspecial responsibilities, almost seeming to take for granted that China’s successes asa resurgent power on the path to fulfilling the “China dream” will garner theadmiration and support of external others.
This makes it important, then, to understand the beliefs that the Beijing leadership
under Xi wishes to promote as well as this changed understanding of what garners it
a respected international status. I have argued in this article that those beliefs in therelationship between the strong state and humanitarian outcomes for people rather
than individuals are deep-seated. They date from imperial times but have been much
reinforced by developments since. In contemporary times and with respect to two
key aspects of the international human protection regime we see a gradual increasein Beijing’s willingness to participate in regime shaping using its own politicaleconomic model as a status marker.

Rosemary Foot, “China and the International Human Protection Regime: Beliefs, Power and Status in a Changing Normative Order, Kokusai
11
Mondai (International Affairs), No.661, May 2017