ABSTRACT
Building a harmonious world featuring sustained peace and common prosperity has become a lynchpin of China’s international strategy. In order to implement it, the government has developed a series of key operational sub-strategies, including a global peace engagement strategy. The main theme of this approach is that China will strive for peace and promote development by means of peace missions mainly consisting of UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) and international peacebuilding operations (IPBOs). The article argues that this strategy is based on two cornerstones, peace and development. In practice, China takes different stances towards PKOs and IPBOs: it is a far more cautious contributor in IPBOs, because China’s understanding of peacebuilding pays particular attention to development, and Western states are suspicious of China’s growing power and intention.
