Protecting the Self : Reproduction of Chinese Collective Memory through Participation in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations

Abstract: Until the 1980s, the People’s Republic of China was principally opposed to United Nations peacekeeping, understanding the institution to be a thinly veiled excuse for powerful states to intervene in the sovereign affairs of others. However, the meaning the country attributes to peacekeeping has changed drastically since then. China has adopted a more pragmatic attitude and has gradually become more supportive and involved in United Nations peacekeeping. Today the country stands as a major contributor to peacekeeping, not least in terms of the number of peacekeepers it contributes to missions. However, how does China make sense of its current behaviour? This paper seeks to understand how the participation of Chinese military personnel and police in peacekeeping operations is made coherent with Chinese self-identity. The paper employs a narrative analysis that focuses on how narratives draw on master narratives about Chinese collective memory to construct participation in peacekeeping as a natural conclusion to already accepted notions about what it means to be Chinese. On the one hand, this paper confirms the findings of previous scholarship on Chinese identity and the country’s attitude on peacekeeping. Like these, this paper finds that China’s self-identity as a part of the Global South and as a great power plays a role in how China conceptualizes peacekeeping. However, on the other hand, the paper also finds dissonance in how the narrative relates peacekeeping to China’s identity as a part of the Global South. Additionally, this paper also demonstrates that the narrative draws on several master narratives that have not previously been identified as important to how China makes meaning of peacekeeping. Specifically, these are the collective memories of ‘Asian values’, China’s experiences from the Second World War, and the revolutionary history of the CPC.