China will shoulder one tenth of the budget for UN peacekeeping operations between 2016 and 2018, just behind the U.S., the UN Peacekeeping chief told the Xinhua News Agency on Sunday.
UN's official website said the top three contributors between 2013 and 2015 to UN Peacekeeping Operations were the U.S. (28.38%), Japan (10.83%) and France (7.22%). China was in sixth at 6.64%.
Hervé Ladsous, UN undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, said that China is the second largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping operations and also the largest troop provider of the UN Security Council's five permanent members. In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to build a standby peacekeeping force of 8,000 troops. Official data shows up to May 2015, 30,178 peacekeeping officers and soldiers have been sent to peacekeeping operations, the China Youth Daily reported.
According to the report, Chinese peacekeepers have renovated and built roads spanning 110,000 kilometers and more than 300 bridges. They have also diffused 9,400 landmines and explosives, shipped 1.1 million tons of materials, completed 450 patrols and 230 convoys, and treated about 149,000 patients.
"Chinese units are well-equipped and well-trained," Ladsous said, adding that Chinese peacekeepers are prepared for the tasks and disciplined.
He said that in the future, the UN can work with China on peacekeeper training and on bringing in modern equipment to peacekeeping operations.
However, since Chinese peacekeepers were mostly assigned to the least developed areas in the world, they regularly faced violence. Apart from gang violence, tensions and fighting among refugees from different ethnic groups or families, often involving large numbers of people and weapons, have also put Chinese peacekeepers in jeopardy. They likewise constantly faced a lack of food and water, according to previous reports.
Notwithstanding these challenges, Chinese peacekeepers have a record of "zero repatriations, zero discipline violations and zero battle casualties," which has received praise from the international community, said Xu Naigang, deputy director of the International Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Public Security.
