China deploys troops in South Sudan to defend oil fields, workers

SOURCE: THE AUSTRALIAN

China began deploying 700 soldiers to a United Nations peacekeeping force in South Sudan to help guard the country’s embattled oil fields and protect Chinese workers and installations, a spokesman for the African nation’s president said Tuesday.

The airlift of the Chinese infantry battalion to the South Sudanese states of Unity and Upper Nile, the site of the only operating oil fields still under control of the central government in Juba, was expected to take several days, spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said.

While Beijing’s troops will operate under U.N. command, their posting to South Sudan marks a sharp escalation of China’s efforts to ensure the safety of its workers and assets in Africa, and guarantee a steady flow of energy for domestic consumption.

The deployment marks the first time Beijing has contributed a battalion to a U.N. peacekeeping force, U.N. officials said. In March 2013, China sent some 300 peacekeepers to Mali to protect Chinese engineers building a U.N. camp in the town of Gao.

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