Draft law would authorise deployments if other countries agreed
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 25 November, 2014, 5:06am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 25 November, 2014, 8:56am
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Paramilitary police may be sent overseas. Photo: SCMP Pictures
China was weighing up a proposal to let its troops head overseas on counterterrorism missions, analysts said, citing military officials attending a security forum in Beijing last week.
The draft of the country's first counterterrorism law includes clauses that would authorise the army and the paramilitary police to carry out counterterrorism missions abroad if the deployment had the consent of the countries involved, Chinese delegates told the Xiangshan Forum last week, according to analysts at the regional security meeting.
The draft legislation was submitted to the National People's Congress Standing Committee in October and is not yet approved.
Li Wei, a counterterrorism analyst at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the legislation would authorise Chinese troops to fight terrorism beyond its borders.
"[The draft] also makes clear the prerequisites for such an operation - the consent of all other countries involved," Li said.
He said Chinese troops rarely ventured abroad, with the most recent instance being in 2004 when armed police were sent to guard the embassy in Iraq.
Renmin University international relations professor Jin Canrong said China was cautious about taking part in overseas operations, given its long-standing principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. But it was now prepared to be more proactive.
"It's faced with escalating domestic terrorism threats, which have been proven to be connected to training and other terror activities abroad. Neighbouring countries are also calling on China to help in areas such as training counterterrorism units and fighting Islamic State."
But Raffaello Pantucci, a security analyst at Britain's Royal United Services Institute, said the draft law was not designed for Chinese troops to be deployed to fight groups like Islamic State on the ground, because this was not necessary.
"China gets a very good response from its immediate [Central Asian] neighbourhood when asking them to deal with a specific group of people it is worried about. And what Western countries need from China is not soldiers going into Iraq but a political consensus," Pantucci said.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Troops may be used to fight terror abroad
