ABSTRACT
This chapter sets the scene for the book and asks what the Chinese Peace—the Chinese approach to peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peacemaking—is. How has it evolved, how is it carried out on the ground in UNPK African missions and what are its normative and ideological foundations? If the liberal peace has its foundation upon the democratic peace thesis that democracies do not go to war with one and other and is carried out in practice in African peace operations via the neoliberal orthodoxy of economic liberalism and democratic reforms, what are the central tenants of the Chinese Peace? This chapter also highlights competing discourses in the China-Africa relationship between Western and Chinese discourses. It notes the theoretical approach of discourse analysis to understand China’s evolving and emerging African peace and security policy. The growing relationship between China and African countries has been depicted in Western press reportage and in speeches by leading Western politicians as a problem: reflecting a general “China Threat” and a “Yellow Peril” discourse. At the same time, Chinese media and Beijing’s official discourses depict the same relationship as a positive: depicting policies by a responsible great power.
