The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a widely endorsed and developing norm aimed at preventing humanitarian atrocities.Major endorsements of R2P at the international level (grouped by actor): International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the ICISS (International Development Research Centre Ottawa, 2001); United Nations Secretaries General: Kofi Annan, A more secure world: our shared responsibility: Report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change UN GOAR, 59th sess, A/59/565 (2004); Kofi Annan, In Larger Freedom: Towards development, security, and human rights for all: Report of the Secretary-General, UN GOAR, 59th sess, A/59/2005 (2005); Ban Ki-moon Secretary General Defends, Clarifies ‘Responsibility to Protect’ at Berlin Event on ‘Responsible Sovereignty: international Cooperation for a Changed World’ UN Dept. of Public Information SG/SM/11701 (2008); Ban Ki-moon, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General UN GOAR, 63rd sess, A/63/677 (2009); United Nations General Assembly: 2005 World Summit Outcome GA Res 60/1, A/Res/60/1 (2005) at -; United Nations Security Council: SC Res 1674, S/Res/1674 (2006) particularly at ; SC Res 1706, S/Res/1706 (2006); SC Res 1973, S/Res/1973 (2011) in particular at and ; United Nations Special Advisor to the Secretary-General, Edward Luck “The United Nations and the Responsibility to Protect” (2008) The Stanley Foundation Available Here. China has been receptive towards the development of R2P since its inception in 2001,International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the ICISS (International Development Research Centre Ottawa, 2001) despite China's traditional tendency to obstruct engagement in humanitarian crises.Sarah Teat ‘Assessing Polemics, Principles and Practices: China and the Responsibility to Protect’ (2009) 1 Global Responsibility to Protect 208 at 208-209 As veto-wielding Security Council member, important regional power,In both the ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN Plus Three processes, see Jochen Prantl and Ryoko Nakano Global Norm Diffusion in East Asia: How China and Japan Implement the Responsibility to Protect (2011, Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, Singapore) at 8. and major economic power, with interests in states experiencing, or vulnerable to, humanitarian crisis,Stephanie Hanson “China, Africa and Oil” (2008) Council on Foreign Relations, available here. including Nigeria,Peter Goodman “Cnooc Buys Oil Interest In Nigeria” The Washington Post (United States of America, 10 July 2006) available here. Zimbabwe,BBC News “China raises stakes in Zimbabwe” (2004) BBC News, available here. Angola and Sudan,Rochelle Mutton “Mugabe sells bankrupt Zimbabwe's assets to China” The Age (Australia, 30 July 2005), available here. the support of China for R2P is vital.
Overview
A new sovereignty A new understanding of state sovereignty arose in the 1990s, incorporating the element of "responsibility."Francis Deng ‘Reconciling Sovereignty with Responsibility: A Basis for International Humanitarian Action’ in John Harbeson & Donald Rothchild (eds) Africa in World Politics: Post-Cold War Challenges (1995, Westview Press, Boulder) at 295; Francis Deng et al Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (1996, Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.) and also adopted by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the ICISS (International Development Research Centre Ottawa, 2001). This meant that no longer could state sovereignty be invoked to shelter states, guilty of committing massive humanitarian atrocities, from international condemnation.Kofi Annan “Two Concepts of Sovereignty” The Economist (London, 18 September 1999) at 48; Kofi Annan Millennium Report and Annual Report on the Work of the Organization UN GOAR, 55th sess, supp. No.1, A/55/1 (2000) at ; Roberta Cohen and Francis Deng ‘Exodus within Borders: The Uprooted Who Never Leave Home’ (1998) 77 Foreign Affairs, at 12.
In light of this progression, there have been indications that Chinese foreign policy has progressed to incorporate the belief that the international community has a responsibility to intervene in the most extreme circumstancesSarah Teitt ‘Assessing Polemics, Principles and Practices: China and the Responsibility to Protect’ (2009) 1 Global Responsibility to Protect 208 at 212-213;Allen Carlson “Protecting Sovereignty, Accepting Intervention: The Dilemma of Chinese Foreign Relations in the 1990s” (2002) 18 National Committee on United States-China Relations: China Policy Series at 24. Possible examples of this include:Jia Qingguo ‘China’ in Watanabe Koji (ed) Humanitarian Intervention: The Evolving Asian Debate (2003, Japan Centre for International Exchange, Tokyo) at 25. A government practicing blatant racism; State failure; Large-scale domestic violence; or The killing of civilians en masse.
China has been identified as a prima facie vulnerable country of concern, whose people are at significant risk of becoming victims of atrocity.Gareth Evans The Responsibility To Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All (2008, Brookings Institution Press, Washington D.C.) at 76. It remains poorly regarded for its handling of internal dissent, especially the crackdowns in Tibet, Xinjiang and the Tiananmen Square massacre.Gareth Evans The Responsibility To Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All (2008, Brookings Institution Press, Washington D.C.) at 63.Amnesty International Preliminary Findings on Killings of Unarmed Civilians, Arbitrary Arrests and Summary Executions since 3 June 1989 (30 August 1989).
Historically, Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalists killed some 10 million people from 1927 to 1949 in group-targeted violence,Hugo Slim Killing Civilians: Method, Madness, and Morality in War (2008, Columbia University Press, New York) at 44. while Mao Zedong's communists killed a further 7 million from 1934 onwards, not including the tens of millions who died following the famine of the Great Leap Forward or the violence of the Cultural Revolution,Hugo Slim Killing Civilians: Method, Madness, and Morality in War (2008, Columbia University Press, New York) at 44. or the 300,000 Chinese slaughtered by Japanese during the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937.Hugo Slim Killing Civilians: Method, Madness, and Morality in War (2008, Columbia University Press, New York) at 51-52.
Current Chinese foreign policy
Chinese foreign policy derives from the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.Xinhua News “Backgrounder: Five principles of peaceful coexistence” (2004) China View/Xinhua News, available here ; Wen Jiabao, Premier of the People’s Republic of China “Carrying Forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in the Promotion of Peace and Development” (Speech at Rally Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence 2004, 28 June 2004), available here; Zhou Enlai Zhou Enlai Waijiao wenxuan or 周恩来外交文选 or Selected works of Zhou Enlai on Diplomacy, at 63. These principles enshrine non-intervention as a cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy. Non-interference principles are also found in China's foreign policy manifestos."China's Independent Foreign Policy of Peace" (2003) Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, available here. This is problematic because non-intervention rejects the common-assertion of R2P, that state sovereignty cannot justify non-action in the face of genocide or mass atrocity.International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the ICISS (International Development Research Centre Ottawa, 2001). Force is permitted in the last resort.2005 World Summit Outcome GA Res 60/1, A/Res/60/1 (2005) at .
The concept of forcible intervention is "alien" to Asian nationsAkiko Fukushima and William Tow "Human Security and Global Governance" in William Tow (ed) Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus? (2009, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) at 170 especially following two horrific wars.The Korean War and the Vietnam War. Chinese reticence to forcible intervention can be traced back to its historical experiences during the First and Second Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, semi-colonization and the Cold War alongside the continued motivations of the Chinese government to maintain dominance over the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang (they also claim Taiwan despite the PRC never having any sovereign claim over the country).Shuisheng Zhao "Chinese Pragmatic Nationalism: Is it Manageable?" (2005) 29 The Washington Quarterly 131.
China have also advocated the principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention to obstruct US-hegemonic expansion.: Zhang Li “A Few Issues Concerning International Intervention” (paper presented at the International Intervention and State Sovereignty Conference, Beijing, 14–15 January 2002); Lu Gang “Preventative Diplomacy and State Sovereignty” (paper presented at the Preventative Diplomacy and State Sovereignty workshop, Shanghai, 8 January 2002); Guo Xuetang “Presentation for Conference on ‘Preventative Diplomacy and State Sovereignty,’” Shanghai, 8 January 2002. China is skeptical of a Western system of human rights being imposed globally, and were quick to accuse the US of threatening a "rising China" following the accidental bombing of a Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the NATO bombing of Kosovo.Zhang Yunling "China: Whither the World Order after Kosovo?" in Albert Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds) Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation, Collective Action and International Citizenship (2000, UNU Press, Tokyo) at 121.
China believes that a state's economic development and historical background should be factors considered when looking at the humanitarian situation in that state.Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Zhongguo de renquan zhuangkuang or 中国的人全状况 or China’s Human Rights Situation (1991, Information Office of the State Council, Beijing) at 67-70. Jiang Zemin felt that human rights should be promoted in light of cultural diversities.Jiang Zemin “Together to Build a China-U.S. Special Relationship Oriented Towards the New Century” (Speech, New York, 8 September 2000), available here. However, this clashes statements made by Ban Ki-moon, that R2P must be integrated into all cultures "without hesitation or condition," to reflect its universality.Ban Ki-moon, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General UN GOAR, 63rd sess, A/63/677 (2009) at . In light of this, China initially dismissed the notion of R2P as a "total fallacy".International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty The Responsibility To Protect, Part III: Background at 392