The Effect Of Identity Politics On China’s Participation In The United Nations Peacekeeping

Globalization and the deepening of China’s opening make international society and China gradually rely on each other deeply and tight. China’s peaceful development, its national revival and the construction of the responsible great power call for peace and stability in the international environment. The United Nations peacekeeping is one of the important means the United Nations to promote the international peace and stability.As a major developing country, China’s participation in the United Nations peacekeeping is one of the important ways in which China will develop peacefully and will build a responsible country. At home and abroad, study of the problem that China participate in the United Nations peacekeeping, from the realistic and new liberal institutionalism, is centered on the necessity and role in engaging in the activity. But each theory and study method have such shortcomings, for example, realism exceedingly focus on power and struggle and new liberal institutionalism emphasize the function in international regimes and organizations that lead to the reduction of cooperation cost and promote the gains of the parties concerned, that it can not give full explanation to the China’s participation in the United Nations peacekeeping. Considering the limitation, this article is aimed, by means of analysis tools-the identity theory of constructivism, to explore the embarrassment or tension in different identities that China frequently encounters in taking an active part in the United Nations peacekeeping during the same period or the different periods. The embarrassment or tension in different identities in turn has exerted influence on peacekeeping decision-making and active involvement in the operation.The first half has built the analytical model of constructivist identity theory and has raised four identity assumptions about China’s participation in the United Nations peacekeeping. The latter half, in a diachronic perspective, demonstrates the underlying assumptions that the first half has raised in this article through an empirical method. The results shows that the identity conflicts or dilemmas that China often meets in participation in the United Nations peacekeeping are clear and that their response to and performance in the identity conflicts or dilemmas that China’s governmental top decision makers encounter have been transferring from ideological restraint that China was and is subjected to and immatureness to reason and maturity. Thus we conclude that the Chinese top policy makers have recognized the existence of the identity conflicts or plight in participation in peacekeeping and actively adjusted to, partially effectively overcome the negative impact of the identity conflicts or plight. I think in this article that in the future, if China want to play a bigger role in the United Nations peacekeeping that is made a platform to build a responsible great country, China must,in recognition of identity and norms and values, be in consistence to the underlying and core values that the international community share. Only in this way can we dispel doubts or suspicion and resolve differences between each other. In research methods, I mainly make use of such ways as:coupling the normative methods with descriptive ones, historical analysis with analytic hierarchy process.