[Comuunist Chinese will wear UN Blue in Africa...]
People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers deployed for United Nations (UN) peace keeping missions line up at their base in China's central Henan province before being sent to Africa, 15 September 2007. China will send a 315-member UN multi-functional engineering unit to the Dafur region of Sudan in October to build and maintain barracks, roads, helipads and bridges.
China peackeepers aim to change image in Darfur
QINYANG, China (AFP) — On one shoulder, Lt. Liu Jinzhao has a sky-blue UN patch signifying membership in a Chinese peacekeeping unit destined for Darfur. On the other shoulder, there is a rather large chip.
"Those who say China is making the situation in Darfur worse are one-sided in their view, and we will prove them wrong," said Liu, a blue UN beret hanging off the side of his head.
"We will show that China can contribute."
Liu spoke on Saturday as his comrades in a 315-member engineering unit shipping out next month went through their paces for foreign reporters in China's latest attempt to play down accusations it is worsening Darfur's agony by supporting the Khartoum regime.
The unit will build bridges and roads, dig wells and perform other tasks, and they showed they mean business at a military training facility in central Henan province.
Under a glaring sun, the unit's bulldozers turned a churned-up stretch of ground into a smooth road in minutes, and 50 soldiers used their bare hands to move a 40-metre stretch of steel bridge into place over a ditch in seconds.
Elsewhere, another squad needed only a few moments to put a roof on an aluminum hut with "UN" emblazoned on its side, while others pummelled unseen enemies with martial arts moves in a snarling show of force.
The carefully choreographed display resembled a three-ring circus but the message was clear: China won't be cast as the villain.
"We will naturally face difficulties and challenges," Colonel Dai Shao'an told reporters. "But we are good at hardship, at fighting, and at making contributions."
A true Chinese change of heart would be welcomed by critics.
The Khartoum regime is blamed for backing militias that have waged a brutal campaign in rebel areas of Darfur which the UN says has led to more than 200,000 deaths in the past four years. The US has termed it genocide.
China, which is the biggest buyer of Sudan's oil, is accused of shielding Khartoum from international action, and some foreign activists have warned the situation will tarnish next year's Beijing Olympics.
But as the pressure has mounted, China recently played a role in getting Khartoum to sign off, after years of foreign pressure, on a new UN-African Union peacekeeping force to be deployed next year.
Yet China needs to do far more, says Jill Savitt, director of US-based pressure group Dream for Darfur.
"China is not yet doing enough. We have to remember that China played an obstructionist role for four long years," she told AFP.
Savitt said China must contribute real combat troops, halt arms sales to Khartoum and threaten consequences if Sudan President Omar El-Bashir backslides.
"China is continuing to underwrite the regime?s ability to wage genocide," she said.
Lt. Li Xinying bristles at such suggestions, using the halting English that has been part of his unit's training for the Darfur mission.
"No Western countries should put the blame on China. We are not responsible for the actions of the Sudan government," he said.
Li and his comrades are among a growing number of Chinese troops being sent abroad.
China says it has dispatched over 8,000 troops on such missions since 1990 and currently has over 1,400 in four hotspots worldwide.
This, plus China's apparent willingness to read the political winds on Darfur is "good for China and good for the world" said Prof. David Zweig, a China foreign policy expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
But he notes: "They have changed their stance but are not going to harm their (Sudanese) oil supply. They know that if they push too hard, Khartoum could just say 'bug off'."