China as a Permanent Member of the Security Council

1 See Sally Morphet, `States Groups at the United Nations, 1945-1999', in John Groom & Paul Taylor, eds, The UN at the Millennium (London: Continuum, forthcoming); and `The Influence of States and Groups of States on and in the Security Council and the General Assembly, 1980-94', Review of International Studies, vol. 21, no. 4, October 1995, pp. 435-462.

2 A detailed, useful account of China's involvement with the UN up till 1978 is provided in Samuel S. Kim, China, the United Nations and World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).

3 China, like all other members of the Council, bargains - mostly in secret - over the text of important draft resolutions. It has chosen to use the veto sparingly, unlike the USA in the 1970s and 1980s (see Table 1).

4 See SC Official Records 1660th Meeting, 25 August 1972, p. 15.

5 See SC Official Records, 10 September 1972, p. 17.

6 Non-participation is a well-tried Security Council tactic. The Chinese, however, used it much more during this period than had been the case before. China chose not to participate in 65 of the 198 Security Council resolutions passed between its first vote on 24 November 1971 and the end of 1981. It also chose not to participate in 5 of the 40 vetoed resolutions over this period.

7 See UN Document PV.1747, 21 October 1973.

8 S/PV.1748, 23 October 1973, pp. 22-36.

9 These, which date back to an agreement between China and India in 1954, are: mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in each other's affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence.

10 For more detail see Sally Morphet, `UN Peacekeeping and Election-Monitoring', in Adam Roberts & Benedict Kingsbury, eds, United Nations Divided World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 197-200.

11 S/PV.1750, 25 October 1973, pp. 7-10.

12 S/PV.1752, 27 October 1973, p. 6.

13 See Morphet, `The Influence of States...' (note 1 above), p. 438.

14 See Morphet, `The Influence of States...' (note 1 above); and Cameron R. Hume, The United Nations, Iran, and Iraq: How Peacemaking Changed (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994).

15 See S/PV.2963, 29 November 1990, pp. 61-63. For the Five Principles, see note 9 above.

16 See S/PV.3116, 19 September 1992, pp. 14-15.

17 S/PV.3312, 11 November 1993, p. 53.

18 S/PV.3453, 8 November 1994, p. 11.

19 S/PV.3707, 22 October 1996, p. 2.

20 S/PV.3826, 23 October 1997, p. 7.

21 S/PV.3868, 31 March 1998, pp. 11-12.

22 S/PV.4011, 10 June 1999, pp. 8-9.

23 S/PV.4084, 17 December 1999, p. 12.

24 Kim (note 2 above), pp. 237-238.