China's changed views on UN peacekeeping

Since the People's Republic of China joined the United Nations in 1971, there has been a significant evolution in Beijing's overall view of UN peacekeeping, from opposition and wariness to a supportive stance and active participation, including in Africa. During the past decade, Beijing has been more willing to make personnel commitments beyond strictly support roles, such as civilian police and specialist engineers, to now include combat forces. Beijing began its first major forays into UN peace operations in the 1990s when there was a marked preference for sending only observers, one early exception being the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1992–93 when two Chinese engineering battalions were deployed.Footnote ⁴

Between 1999 and 2002, Beijing also agreed to send civilian police units as liaisons with a standing UN mission, namely the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), despite that conflict involving a crisis involving separatism, normally an anathema to Chinese foreign policy, given the Taiwan factor.Footnote ⁵ Since the 1990s, China has sent both military personnel and civilian policy officials to several disparate UN missions in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, and by 2009 China had overtaken France as the largest supplier of UN peacekeeping personnel within the “permanent five” members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). As of October 2018, China had approximately 2,600 UN personnel stationed abroad, out of approximately 90,200 in total.Footnote ⁶ Beijing also substantially increased its share of the UN peacekeeping budget over the past decade, from 3.9 per cent in 2012 to 6.6 per cent in 2015, as compared with the United States (28 per cent), Japan (10.8 per cent) and France (7.2 per cent). Then, in May 2016, Beijing announced that it would once more augment its share of the UN peacekeeping budget, contributing 10.3 per cent between 2016 and 2018, thus making China the second-largest contributor after the US.Footnote ⁷

During an address to the UN General Assembly in September 2015, President Xi also announced the creation of a standby UN force of 8,000 Chinese personnel, along with a ten-year US$1 billion fund for joint Chinese–United Nations peace initiatives during the following decade, and US$100 million to be donated to African security initiatives over a period of five years. According to the Chinese Defence Ministry, the 8,000 personnel were all registered as of September 2017, with 850 of these slated to become a part of a UN rapid-response force, known as the “Vanguard Brigade.”Footnote ⁸

Beijing's growing and diversified contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, as well as its greater commitment to addressing humanitarian emergencies abroad, have become a source of pride for the country's security establishment while blunting international concerns about the rise of Chinese military power.Footnote ⁹ This is also an oft-cited example of its commitment to evolving as a great power via the doctrine of “peaceful development” (heping fazhan 和平发展), introduced at the start of the Hu Jintao presidency in 2003. China's UN commitments were more fully developed under the Xi government in order to illustrate the country's expanded foreign policy interests, including being more cooperative and supportive of multilateral operations designed to improve security abroad, but also in ways contrasting with those of the West. At the same time, China's security interests have expanded in proportion to the numbers of Chinese citizens and assets abroad. These Chinese policies were in keeping with being a “responsible great power” (fuzeren daguo 负责任大国), while moving away from the “lying low” (taoguang yanghui 韬光养晦) strategy prevalent in Chinese foreign policy since the 1980s, and gaining further global recognition for the country's alternative models of strategic cooperation,Footnote ¹⁰ particularly in developing regions.

Despite the more favourable stance towards multilateralism, Chinese policy remains influenced by the Cold War-era “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” (hepinggong chuwuxiang yuanze 和平共处五项原则), the early Maoist-era doctrine that advocated respect for sovereignty and non-interference in states’ sovereign affairs.Footnote ¹¹ The ideas prompting a revision of China's thinking on peacekeeping began to coalesce in the middle of that decade and continued into the current century under Hu Jintao. They became more complex as Beijing began to expand its diplomacy beyond Asia and into cross-regional policies that, of necessity, prompted a greater Chinese role not only in economic partnerships but also in security problems further from the country's periphery, including in Africa, an area in which much of the recent Chinese cross-regional diplomacy has been evident.Footnote ¹²

Beijing's changed views on multilateralism and security developed during a period in the 1990s when Chinese policy began to acknowledge the reality that many security problems could not be effectively addressed unilaterally, with cooperation often a more effective method of developing both security and confidence-building. By the end of the decade, after demonstrating wariness towards the ideas of “human security” (renlei anquan 人类安全), namely the blending of human rights issues with security initiatives and placing a greater focus on the individual rather than on the state, Beijing began to examine this branch of security far more closely, although Chinese policy circles favoured the use of the less-politically sensitive term “non-traditional security” (fei chuantong anquan 非传统安全). There was a growing concern that retaining Cold War-era perceptions of security would be detrimental in facing a growing number and variety of non-state security challenges, including global terrorism and the destabilizing effects of state collapse, especially in regions where China was developing stronger economic interests.Footnote ¹³ Non-traditional security challenges have now become embedded in modern Chinese military strategy, including in crucial economic regions such as Africa, and have played a part since the mid-2000s in China's pursuit of engaging in “long-distance manoeuvres” (changtu yanxi 长途演习),Footnote ¹⁴ including overseas peacekeeping.

However, as China's peacekeeping policy matured and as international security issues began to increase in complexity and interconnectedness, there was a growing realization in Beijing that it would have to reconsider its peacekeeping policies to prepare itself for “multifunctional” (duogongneng 多功能) missions, prompting much internal debate within China not only over policy but also whether new and broader thinking on Beijing's part was required.Footnote ¹⁵ Much of China's initial peacekeeping policies, it had been argued, were dominated by “first generation peacekeeping” (yidai weihe 一代维和) practices, echoing Cold-War era UN operations but with a stronger emphasis on maintaining sovereignty, neutrality and the pursuit of consent, as opposed to the more multifaceted “robust peacekeeping” (qiangli weihe 强力维和), more commonplace after the 1990s as civil conflicts became more prevalent. China's growing global diplomatic, strategic and economic interests, as well as the country's increasing acceptance of the principles of “responsibility to protect” (guojia baohu zeren 国家保护责任) or R2P, all prompted a revisiting of the “robust” peacekeeping question,Footnote ¹⁶ including whether China would be in a position to provide combat forces in addition to support and engineering personnel. It is argued that although China has developed a greater understanding and appreciation of R2P, much difference of opinion remains within the country as how best to pursue these policies while still retaining support for Westphalian sovereignty.Footnote ¹⁷

The widening and deepening of Beijing's UNPKO interests since the late 1990s also served to augment Chinese “soft power” in key regions such as Africa, while mitigating the perception of a looming “China threat” (Zhongguo weixie 中国威胁) especially in the developing world.Footnote ¹⁸ Since Xi Jinping assumed office, all signs have indicated that Beijing continues to seek methods of deepening its developing country partnerships, many of which have been based on increased trade, especially in raw materials considered essential to the continuing growth of the Chinese economy. In many aspects of Chinese diplomacy in the developing world, there remain many vestiges of 1990s-era “large developing country” (fanzhanzhong daguo 发展中大国) thinking which, in the case of its UN peacekeeping policies, have served the country's interests well.Footnote ¹⁹ However, with China's increasing power, an argument can be made that the country's “middle power” approach to peacekeeping may be eroding, especially in light of the commencement of Belt and Road investments and projects that have included Africa in a more overt fashion.Footnote ²⁰ Therefore, China may be viewing its current peacekeeping policy as a window of opportunity that will not remain open indefinitely.

China currently remains openly supportive of the principles of UN peacekeeping, both as a way of prompting peaceful multilateral settlement of disputes and more frequently to include Chinese armed forces in “military operations other than war,” or MOOTW (feizhanzheng xing junshi xingdong 非战争性军事行动). These include humanitarian missions, disaster relief, and increasingly, peacekeeping missions. The MOOTW concept, which has been included in Chinese Defence White Papers since 2008, offered an opportunity for the country to demonstrate the expansion of its military capabilities in a cooperative manner. Peacekeeping has been viewed by the Chinese military as a main component of MOOTW missions, along with counter-terrorism, relief and rescue.Footnote ²¹ However, the case of Mali has demonstrated to Beijing that deepening Chinese support for modern UN peacekeeping operations is not without risks and complicated questions, including in the areas of peacekeeping under combat conditions, cooperation with other major external stakeholders, and defining the criteria for successful missions and achieved goals, not only for the United Nations but also for China's own security concerns as the country's economic interests continue to become globalized. Thus, difficult decisions about previously held views and ideologies by the Xi government were required in response to “messy” peacekeeping operations such as the ongoing Mali mission.

A thousand cuts: the trials of Mali

China's attempts to juggle both its suspicions of Western interventionist policies and its own expanding economic diplomacy in the developing world, notably Africa, were seriously challenged by events in the north-western part of the continent in 2012–13. The state of Mali first drew the attention of the United Nations due to a growing separatist movement in the desolate, underdeveloped north-eastern part of the country. Prior to independence, Mali was part of greater French West Africa, and it remains one of the poorest nations on the continent, with a per capita GDP of approximately US$1100 and an economy based on agriculture (primarily cotton) and gold mining. The landlocked country's sparse population (19.5 million), is primarily based in the south, and within the capital of Bamako. The northern part of the country, which abuts the Sahara, is sparsely populated with comparatively more porous borders. The country's location, surrounded by conflicts and instability in Algeria, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and Niger, as well as the aftershocks of the post-2010 “Arab Spring” uprisings across North Africa and Southwest Asia, left the country and the overall region vulnerable to a “bad neighbourhood” security dilemma, in terms of illegal immigration, weapons smuggling and radicalization.Footnote ²²

One of these recent conflicts, the civil war in Libya since 2011, which resulted in the ouster of leader Muammar Gaddafi and the splintering of the country between several factions, including the local branch of the Islamic State as well as local support groups, was widely seen as the main catalyst for greater instability in much of the Sahel region.Footnote ²³ Insurgents and extremists involved in that conflict began to base operations in the desolate regions of northern Mali, along with weapons appropriated from the Libyan fighting, in the hopes of creating a more permanent redoubt in the Sahel. By early 2012, local militants sought to create a separate state of Azawad, forcibly carved out of Mali's northern desert regions, drawing from Tuareg (Berber) nomads in the territory who had been largely disenfranchised, socially and economically, from the more prosperous south and the central government in Bamako.

What would otherwise have been a relatively limited insurgency soon developed into an international concern when the separatists joined with a second coalition of extremists, headed by the Ansar Dine (Ansar al-Din, or “Defenders of the Faith”) and backed by Al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique/Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Ansar Dine had been a longstanding opponent of the Malian government and a supporter of Tuareg independence, as well as the implementation of strict shari'a law across Mali. The AQIM, primarily based in Algeria, acted as Al-Qaeda's main arm in North Africa since its organization was formalized in 2007, with a splinter group, al-Mulathamin (“the Masked Ones”) operating in northern Mali.Footnote ²⁴ Two other Islamic fundamentalist groups, Le Mouvement pour l'unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l'Ouest (“Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa”) and Boko Haram, operating out of northern Nigeria, further destabilized northern Mali and began to capture towns throughout the region while flush with smuggled arms and trained militants both from within Mali and from the nearby Libyan conflict.Footnote ²⁵

In April 2012, the rebels captured the ancient city of Timbuktu (Tombouctou), threatening ancient texts and other historical relics in the centuries-old settlement, and by January 2013 the strategically important town of Konna, 700 kilometres from Bamako, was also overrun, underscoring the vulnerability of the capital to attack by rebel forces.Footnote ²⁶ The civilian government began to be viewed as incapable of properly addressing the conflict, and the country descended further into anarchy in March 2012 when a military coup ousted President Amadou Toumani Touré over the civilian government's inability to deal with northern security crises, domestic differences in Malian constitutional reforms, and fears that the country could not battle the insurgents without outside assistance.Footnote ²⁷ However, rather than strengthen the resolve of the Malian Armée de Terre, the coup accomplished the opposite, including mutinies and additional disorder which allowed the various rebel groups to gain still more territory with negligible opposition.

The interim military government headed by Dioncounda Traoré thus requested French military assistance in early January 2013 as the security situation continued to worsen and it became apparent that despite concerns in North Africa over Mali's deepening crisis, regional security mechanisms lacked both the coordination and the resolve to respond. A cautiously-worded report on the Mali situation released by the UN Secretary-General in November 2012, as well as two UNSC resolutions which essentially placed the onus of solving the crisis on the fractured Malian government, also raised concerns that the organization was not prepared to respond effectively to calls for outside intervention.Footnote ²⁸

France, therefore, was facing mounting pressure to respond to the crisis, unilaterally if necessary.Footnote ²⁹ In the face of these developments, at the beginning of 2013 the then-government of François Hollande controversially reversed its decision made during the previous October that France's support for the Malian government would be restricted solely to material goods.Footnote ³⁰ During an October 2012 parliamentary speech in Dakar, Senegal, Hollande sought to assure African leaders that France was moving away from its previous hegemonic role in the region.Footnote ³¹ However, with the announcement that France would go it alone, or at least with African allies and without other Western ones, in rolling back extremist forces in Mali, it was demonstrated that France was not going to be abandoning its security interests in the Sahel region. French military intervention under Opération Serval began in January 2013 with the blessing of several Western European governments and the United States.Footnote ³²

As Islamist forces continued to threaten the capital, the United Nations authorized the intervention of French and African troops to push the rebels back during the first half of 2013, recapturing all key towns in the north by the end of January.Footnote ³³ A provisional peace agreement between Bamako and the Tuareg rebels was signed in June 2013, with an election successfully held the following month. However, due to sporadic attacks by extremist rebel militias and irregulars, the country's northern regions remained unstable even after foreign forces arrived in Mali. Following the signing of the peace agreement, the UN authorized the formation of MINUSMA whose mandate included the reestablishment of Malian state authority throughout the country as well as the protection of civilians and ancient sites. The mission was authorized after the successful April 2013 passing of UN Security Council Resolution 2100 (2013) that authorized approximately 11,200 personnel to be deployed in Mali under the United Nations.Footnote ³⁴ France, however, would remain at the forefront of peace operations, with the goal for Paris and the international community being not only ending the Malian conflict, but also stabilizing the Greater Sahel region.

For Beijing, the events of early 2013 in Mali were especially unsettling for several reasons. First, the Chinese government was dismayed at the possibility of another civil conflict spilling over into a region where Beijing had a growing number of economic interests. Second, Beijing was also concerned that France would view Opération Serval as a “Trojan Horse” policy to tacitly revive its dominant position in the Sahel region,Footnote ³⁵ especially in the wake of Chinese frustration over what it saw as the West's mishandling of UN resolutions to protect civilians during the start of the Libyan civil war. In a significant departure from Beijing's traditional views on non-interference in individual states’ sovereign affairs, China had opted to abstain in a UNSC vote in March 2011 which created a “no-fly zone” over Libyan airspace and permitted the UN to protect civilians from attack. However, Beijing was dismayed about subsequent NATO airstrikes on Libya that accelerated the fall of the Gaddafi regime, actions which Beijing saw as flagrant abuse of a UNSC mandate and the possible setting of a precedent.Footnote ³⁶ These factors helped focus Chinese attention on the greater regional ramifications of Mali's potentially violent disintegration, and prompted the subsequent decision by Beijing, which had initially supported the creation of MINUSMA, to participate more directly in the peacekeeping mission.

In December 2013, China sent 135 personnel, including engineers and medical staff as well as – for the first time – combat forces with a mandate beyond simply the protection of Chinese personnel, to Mali as an advance team for an overall initial force of 395 persons within the UN operation. As of December 2017, five Chinese peacekeeping missions had been deployed to Mali, with slightly fewer than four hundred Chinese personnel on the ground at the end of that year, and in February 2018, members of the fifth Chinese MINUSMA force were chosen to receive the UN's Peace Medal of Honour in recognition of their service. In April of that year, a sixth detachment of 395 peacekeepers was confirmed for the following month.Footnote ³⁷

China's rationales for entering the Mali mission

Since MINUSMA's creation, the Mali conflict has proven to be a crucial test of Chinese commitment to peace operations for several reasons. First, the decision to send combat forces to a UN mission was a watershed event, as previously Beijing preferred to restrict its contributions of UN personnel to civilian police, normally drawn from civilian units and the People's Armed Police (PAP), as well as engineers, medical and other support staff. The strategic component of the force would be drawn from the 16th Combined Corps of the Shenyang Military Area Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).Footnote ³⁸ This had been a delicate subject in Chinese policymaking circles at least as far back as 2006 when Beijing contemplated adding combat forces to its contribution to UN peacekeeping operations in Lebanon, but ultimately decided against that option. Although the Chinese government did make mention of the added security component to its contribution to the Mali operation, this was done in a muted fashion, downplaying the military aspect of its participation. The fact that the UN peacekeeping operations in Mali were designed to protect a regime, rather than to undermine or depose one, was also a factor in China's decision to participate as well as to include a security force component.Footnote ³⁹

Second, unlike in other parts of Africa where Chinese peacekeeping personnel had been committed, notably Sudan and South Sudan, Mali was not a major economic partner for China, nor did Mali have a resource base that Chinese firms were actively seeking to co-develop. However, the Mali mission did play a part in China's wider diplomatic engagement of Africa which began under President Hu's cross-regional diplomacy in Africa, a process expanded under Xi Jinping. Mali had played a role in China's expanding African diplomacy after the turn of the century. For example, Malian leaders visited China four times in the period between 2004 and 2010, and Hu Jintao toured Mali in February 2009 as part of his government's expanded cross-regional diplomatic policies in Africa.Footnote ⁴⁰ Agreeing to participate in the UN Mali operations permitted Beijing to assuage global concerns that China's African diplomacy was based solely on resource extraction. This stance would assume even greater importance after the Belt and Road policies began to be unveiled later in 2013. At the same time, Beijing was becoming sensitive to Western views, including from then-US President Barack Obama,Footnote ⁴¹ that China was “free riding” on American and Western-led military operations, and Mali provided an opportunity for Beijing to more directly demonstrate its commitment to African security.

Third, China's swift commitment of UN personnel in early 2013 to the Mali operation demonstrated not only a firm commitment to peacekeeping but also an acknowledgement of the growing connections between poverty and insecurity, including in unstable regions in Africa like the Sahel. In 2013, China used the Mali intervention to return to its earlier diplomatic stances, equating state instability with economic underdevelopment. As one editorial in the China Daily noted, while France's actions worked to prevent the brand of radical extremism from spreading across the Sahel, the real problem was the widespread poverty in Mali and the surrounding region which needed to be better addressed in order to prevent such extremist groups from returning to the region.Footnote ⁴² Even before France had launched Opération Serval, Chinese government officials had regarded the worsening situation in the Sahel region as a product of underdevelopment and diplomatic failures. In a December 2012 speech at the UNSC, Ambassador Li Baodong stressed that the solution for Mali and the surrounding region was not only improvement in international coordination of aid and assistance, but also the requirement for regional governments and actors to take the lead in peacebuilding.Footnote ⁴³ Given its lack of experience in the region, Chinese forces needed to be reliant on the UN, other mission contributors, and local governments.

Finally, the Mali operations offered China an opportunity to further establish itself as an alternative provider of security in the developing world, especially in the case of Africa. In Mali, a window was provided for China to contrast its peacekeeping and peacebuilding policies with that of France and the West as a whole. Beijing was at best ambivalent about the initial announcement of Opération Serval, and was concerned that France was using the mission to cement a more permanent presence in the Sahel region, and that should France, alone, attempt to pacify Mali, it would eventually walk into a quagmire.Footnote ⁴⁴ The Chinese government's initial response to France's decision to send forces to Mali was reserved but not overtly critical. In the first official statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry after operations began, the question of France's role was not addressed.Footnote ⁴⁵ Instead, the spokesperson condemned attacks by the rebel forces, affirmed Chinese support for the Malian government, and called for an “Africa-led” intervention mission, consistent with Beijing's preferences for crises of this nature to be addressed by local actors when possible.

Moreover, as some China-based Africa analysts noted, France's intervention placed it in a much stronger diplomatic position vis-à-vis both China and the United States, especially since the Obama government did not send forces to Mali. It was also argued in one Chinese newspaper editorial that the decision by the Hollande government to intervene not only risked the same quagmire that the US encountered in Afghanistan, but also created the possibility for the “legalization of a new interventionism in Africa,” an unwelcome precedent in Beijing's view. As well, the article noted that “France's involvement in Mali is still a risky business. One of the drawbacks of this action is that it brings back memories of the “‘African gendarmerie’.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Another editorial in the same news agency noted that the West was seeking a stronger strategic presence in Africa, and suggested France might have had economic motives in intervening in Mali. The piece concluded by stating that, under the circumstances, the Chinese government should neither send troops nor financial support to Mali, a recommendation which Beijing ultimately did not follow.Footnote ⁴⁷ By agreeing to participate in MINUSMA, China could shake off the label of “free rider” in Africa while still providing a balance to French and other Western personnel involved in Mali peacekeeping.

However, China's deeper engagement in UN peacekeeping operations, including in Mali, has also meant exposure by Chinese personnel to greater dangers, which could challenge the country's commitment to peacekeeping in the future.Footnote ⁴⁸ The Mali mission has proven to be especially dangerous for foreign military and civilian personnel as the country continues to be vulnerable to terrorist and militant attacks. These vulnerabilities were tragically illustrated in June 2016 when Shen Liangliang, a Sergeant First Class with the PLA Ground Forces, was killed by an improvised explosive device near the Chinese barracks at Gao, with four other Chinese peacekeepers wounded. As with previous Chinese personnel who had been killed while serving on UN missions, Shen was honoured as a martyr (lieshi 烈士) for his sacrifice.Footnote ⁴⁹

The danger to Chinese civilians in the country, despite the UN presence, was also underscored by the November 2015 attack by Al-Mourabitoun (or “the Sentinels,” an extremist group which operated in Sahel region in 2013–17), and AQIM militants on a hotel regularly used by foreign visitors in Bamako. The attack left three employees with the China Railway Construction Corp. dead, along with 18 other civilians, and led to questions about whether Chinese peacekeepers should have played a greater role in protecting Chinese non-combatants.Footnote ⁵⁰ Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi referred to the deaths in Bamako as an “inhuman atrocity.” Then in June 2017 an attack by militants from Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (“Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims”), or JNIM, a coalition of regional extremist groups loyal to Al-Qaeda, on a resort complex outside of Bamako left four dead, including a Chinese national.Footnote ⁵¹

These events, as well as Chinese casualties in other UN peacekeeping missions in Africa, including two Chinese fatalities in South Sudan in June 2016, prompted further debate within the Chinese government about the country's resolution to continue to maintain a strong commitment to these sorts of peacekeeping missions.Footnote ⁵² Despite the still tenuous security situation in Mali, China has remained committed to seeing the successful conclusion of MINUSMA, underscored during a May 2017 meeting between Wang Yi and his opposite number in Bamako, then Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, in Beijing, in which Wang confirmed that China was dedicated to bringing peace in the region as well as assisting Mali with economic development.Footnote ⁵³

Relative gains: the benefits of Mali intervention

Until the recent diversification of China's African diplomacy under Xi Jinping, Beijing's primary diplomatic partners in Africa have traditionally been those states with much larger resource bases, including Angola, South Africa, Sudan/South Sudan and Zambia. What had made the Mali case a watershed for China's peacekeeping thinking was that the West African country was not a major source of Chinese trade. However, under Xi the Chinese government has taken on a more regional-level approach to African diplomacy in addition to bilateral ties, including via institutions such as the Belt and Road and FOCAC.

For example, during a March 2013 tour of African states shortly after taking office, President Xi stressed in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that China was poised to be an important economic power for the continent while avoiding the nationalism and hegemonism previously practised by European great powers in Africa.Footnote ⁵⁴ The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation, founded in 2000, has recently become a platform for Chinese Belt and Road projects, including via the African Union (AU), and it was at FOCAC’s Johannesburg Summit in December 2015 that President Xi outlined “five pillars” of Sino-Africa cooperation, namely equality, economic cooperation, cultural exchanges, security cooperation and solidarity in international affairs. China's diplomacy in Africa has also been affected by the perceived American pullback from the continent under the US administration of Donald Trump.Footnote ⁵⁵

China's trade with the whole of Africa surpassed American and European levels in 2009, and as of 2017 stood at US$170 billion. Three new economic partners for China in Africa have also made the overall region more attractive to Beijing's regional trade policies, namely Burkina Faso, Gambia and São Tomé and Príncipe, which switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in May 2018, March and December 2016, respectively.Footnote ⁵⁶ Specific Chinese trade with Mali stood at US$405 million in 2017, compared with US$189.2 million in 2006, and during that period China had become Mali's largest bilateral trading partner by the time the civil war broke out.Footnote ⁵⁷

The Malian government of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta officially pledged support for the Belt and Road process in 2017, and the country has benefitted from specific Chinese development projects spearheaded by Beijing, which has called for the building of Malian infrastructure and improving human resources, as well as agricultural cooperation.Footnote ⁵⁸ For example, in 2015 two Chinese firms agreed to complete the construction of a US$750 million dam at Taoussa in northeastern Mali, and a hydroelectric plant built in Guinea in 2015 was providing electrical power two years later to Mali and neighbouring countries. Also, in December 2017 Beijing agreed to export 500 tonnes of rice to Bamako to address the food insecurity situation in Mali.Footnote ⁵⁹ Thus, China's commitment to peacebuilding in Mali has also served to emphasize Beijing's overall commitment to regional partnerships for the West African and Sahel regions, as that part of the continent develops as a sub-regional priority for Beijing.

In addition to the economic dimension of China's Mali engagement, there have also been opportunities for Beijing to continue to expand its regional security diplomacy. For example, in December 2017, a Chinese engineering detachment held a joint drill in Mali with Nigerian peacekeepers in Ménaka, a region in Mali that had experienced several terrorist attacks during that year. China has also begun to cooperate more closely with France in the region, in recognition of mutual concerns over instability and terrorism in the Sahel region. This has included Chinese support promised by President Xi to French President Emmanuel Macron for the “G5-Sahel” anti-terrorism force which began operations in Mali in December 2017 and includes local Malian forces along with troops from the other four Sahel nations, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger, and is supported by French forces as part of Opération Barkhane, in place since 2014. After years of rocky Sino-French relations under the administrations of Nikolas Sarkozy and François Hollande in Paris, closer security cooperation in Africa may ultimately be the catalyst for growing bilateral cooperation.Footnote ⁶⁰