On May 31, a rocket attack in the Water Tower neighborhood of the Malian town of Gao struck Chinese peacekeepers. The attack killed 29-year-old First Sgt. Shen Lianlian and injured several of his fellow soldiers. A separate strike the same day killed one French national and two Malians.
Beijing dispatched an investigative team of soldiers and diplomats to Gao. China’s ambassador to Mali, Lu Huiying, told Chinese media the team is to assist the United Nations as it probes the attack.
Read the whole thing.
China, for all its expansionistic actions in the waters off its eastern and southern shores, has steadfastly maintained a non-interventionist policy in Africa for decades. But as the article notes, that has changed considerably in recent years. Why the change?
Oil.
China’s impressive economic growth in the last three decades has relied heavily on coal, of which China has abundant supplies, but it is also increasingly reliant upon ever increasing use of oil. And securing oil is, for China as much as the US, a critical national security issue. Unlike the US, China has relatively little domestic production. And so they must turn to overseas sources. And for China, Africa is a very attractive place to invest in oil production infrastructure.
But while Africa may not be the mess the Middle East is, it is hardly the stable environment they might wish for. And so, they find themselves increasingly called to use their military to protect their investments. To be sure, to date the deployments have been small scale, but it is likely that they, like so many other nations, will see an expanding role and significant mission creep.
XBradTC 
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