By Oliver Bräuner
Like Libya and Sudan, the recent crisis in Iraq underscores the limits of China’s non-interference policy.
On June 28, 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Myanmar President U Thein Sein and Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to mark the 60th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. In his keynote speech, Xi reiterated China’s traditional policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. He warned against the “flexing of military muscles” and vowed China’s continued opposition to “illegal” regime changes.
However, at the same time, China was struggling to safely evacuate up to 1,300 Chinese workers from northern Iraq. They had been working on a $1.2 billion power plant project for the state-owned China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) in Samarra, a city currently under threat from Sunni Islamist rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).
These two events illustrate the growing gap between China’s official non-interference rhetoric and the rapidly evolving challenges to Chinese overseas interests.
Read the full story at The Diplomat