The armed forces nudged farther afield

FOR a fast-rising power, China is shy about military deployment beyond its borders. But its decision to dispatch four military transport planes to Libya and a guided-missile frigate to waters nearby suggests a rethink of its posture.

On March 2nd one of the four planes ferried 250 Chinese in Libya to Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. The ship, Xuzhou, which had been on anti-piracy duties in the Gulf of Aden, arrived on the same day.

These efforts are more symbolic than anything. Of 30,000-odd Chinese in Libya when the unrest began, all but about 1,000 seem to have left the country before the deployments began. Still, they are a sign that the Chinese armed forces have gained confidence since the dispatch in December 2008 of a small flotilla to join international operations against Somali pirates.

The anti-piracy mission was the navy’s first active-duty assignment beyond East Asia. China has long been wary of stirring fears about its growing military capabilities, as well as of revealing frailties to potential enemies, America in particular. The Libyan deployments are best understood as responding to domestic pressures. For the government to show little concern for Chinese lives in Libya would have gone down poorly at home, especially among the country’s fiery online nationalists.

A similar calculation was at work with China’s unusual vote on February 26th in favour of a UN resolution imposing sanctions on Muammar Qaddafi and calling for an investigation into whether he has committed crimes against humanity. Officially, China still abhors what it calls “interference in other countries’ internal affairs”. But Colonel Qaddafi’s control is tenuous, and Chinese lives are at risk. The Communist Party would be lambasted for propping up the man endangering them.

In a blog on the website of Caijing, a Beijing magazine, a Chinese journalist suggested that it was time for China to give up the non-interference policy. The article was boldly titled “Support the dispatch of American troops to Libya” and it argued that “human rights come before sovereignty”. It said that when “a tyrant enslaves his country and tyrannises and massacres his citizens” talk of non-interference is so many “dog farts”. The party might not put it quite like that.

Meanwhile, Chinese leaders have noted lumbering attempts by India, the region’s other rising power, to rescue its citizens trapped in Libya. By March 2nd only a quarter of the 18,000 Indians in Libya were safe, mostly rescued by civilian airlines and cruise ships chartered by the government. Three Indian naval ships have also been sent to help, though they were not due for some days. Two military transport planes were being prepared. For good measure, the foreign ministry boasted how many committee meetings had discussed the evacuation. The authorities bristle at any comparison with others’ quicker responses. “We are not in competition with China here,” tweeted an angry Indian foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao. “Please do not devalue this.”