Security and peacekeeping challenges ahead for China
- Source: Global Times
- [21:14 November 05 2009]
- Comments
Editor's Note:
Bates Gill is the Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an organization that conducts scientific research into questions of conflict and cooperation of importance for international peace and security. Gill has a long record of research and publication on international and regional security issues. The following is an interview by Global Times reporter Wu Meng (GT) with Bates Gill (Gill) on issues concerning security and China's military development.
GT: You wrote in the SIPRI Yearbook 2009 that the economic crisis was likely to worsen challenges to peace worldwide. Have there been any signs of this yet?
Gill: What we meant by saying this is that governments worldwide, especially Western governments, are faced with a number of financial challenges, forcing a tougher prioritization of policies both domestically and internationally.
Of course, for most countries, domestic priorities come first, which means that the time and money available for overseas issues like peacekeeping, development aid and stabilizing difficult global situations are reduced or constrained.
Unfortunately, there just is not enough time and resources available to meet all the many problems that the world faces, and especially so under the current financial situation.
If you look at some specific examples, such as the ability of the US and its allies and friends to address challenges in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, then we can say that there have not been the kind of improvements we would like, and if anything, the situation has gotten worse.
So the conditions of financial crisis have led to greater difficulties in addressing the challenges we face on security and peace.
GT: At the National Day event on October 1, China proudly paraded new military hardware, including missiles. What do you think of such displays?
Gill: Most China specialists understand a lot about the new hardware and that they had been in process for a long time.
There were not any surprises in the way that the hardware was displayed. In terms of motivations and purpose, that is obviously a question we can only speculate about as outsiders. I suppose it has a number of purposes.
The most important purpose is probably domestic in nature. That is to say, such parades demonstrate to the Chinese people the progress and modernization that the Chinese military has achieved. It demonstrates a kind of national pride on the part of Chinese people for the progress and advances China has made, especially over the last three decades.
It might also signal a sense about the strength of the Communist Party of China and the strength of the Chinese military as being critically important and political actors in the Chinese domestic scene.
