The situation in the peace-keeping field of the UN has now undergone fairly significant changes. The scope and content of the peace-keeping action keep growing, exerting an ever-increasing impact on the international situation and playing a significant role in the maintenance of peace and security. In August 2000, UN Secretary General Annan submitted the Prahime Report on the reform of the peace-keeping action. Discussions on the report have been going on in the Security Council and the UN Special Committee on peace keeping. In June 2001, the latter held deep-going discussions on the questions of enhancing human resources of the peace-keeping department of the UN Secretariat, structural reforms of the said department and furtherance of cooperation with troop-sending countries.

China supports peace -keeping actions in conformity with the spirit of the UN Charter and takes an active part in all discussions of the Security Council in this connection. It also adopts a positive attitude towards the reform of the UN peace-keeping actions in the hope of enhancing its role and improving its performance. In the meantime, it believes that the reform on peace-keeping should be guided by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and observe the principles which have been proved effective through the practice in the UN over many years, in particular those concerning respect of state sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, fairness, concurrence of the countries concerned and non-use of forces except for self-defence.

As a permanent member of the Security Council, China attaches great importance to the peace-keeping work of the UN and has made its own contributions to it. In 1988, China became a member of the UN Special Committee on Peace-Keeping. In 1990, it dispatched military observers for the first time to take part in the UN truce supervisory organization. So far China has successively dispatched over 1,000 men/times of military observers, engineering troops and civil police to take part in the peace-keeping actions in the UNTSO, the UNIKOM, the MINURSO, the UNTAC, the ONUMOB, the UNOMIL, the UNOMSIL, the UNMEE, the MONUC, the UNTATE, and the UNMIBH. Since 1999, China has dispatched 124 men/times of civil police in the peace-keeping actions in East Timor and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Currently 43 military observers and 75 civil policemen from China are on the peace-keeping mission.