From Time Magazine:
You could almost hear the clock ticking last week as diplomats scrambled to find a solution to end the killing in Darfur, western Sudan…
Amid the diplomatic flurry, and as evidence emerged of a new government offensive in Darfur ” Human Rights Watch says government planes indiscriminately bombed civilian-occupied villages in rebel-held areas last week ” one powerful voice was noticeably silent: China’s. Khartoum and Beijing are close. The China National Petroleum Corp. owns 40 percent ” the largest single share ” of the consortium that pumps some 330,000 barrels of oil a day from Sudan’s oil fields. Beijing has blocked the threat of U.N. sanctions against Sudan’s regime and protects it in other ways. But with the bodies piling up in Darfur, would China, which abstained in the Security Council vote on a peacekeeping force, try to twist Khartoum’s arm to accept U.N. troops?
Probably not. “They tend to see this whole problem in terms of economic investments rather than human rights,” says Suliman Baldo, Africa Program Director at International Crisis Group (ICG), an NGO that aims to help prevent conflict. [Full text]
In the same issue, another article about China’s diplomatic influence around the world, “The New Power in the Persian Gulf:
Forget the U.S. and Europe. China is the key player in the Iranian nuclear crisis.”
