Angel or dragon? China and the United Nations.

• Author: Fullilove, Michael

CHINA'S RISING confidence, diplomatic dexterity and military capability would, if plotted on a chart, produce a growth curve every bit as impressive as the country's recent economic performance. Analysts rightfully focus on China's expanding clout in Southeast Asia and its thickening ties with U.S. treaty allies, such as South Korea and Australia. Watchful types report on China's emerging influence in resource-rich countries in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Some observers note with alarm the role Beijing is playing in the new Asian institutions such as the East Asia Summit and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

But for all the talk of China's growing sway, there is one arena for the exercise of Chinese influence that has attracted less attention than it deserves. China has quickened the pace of its interactions with the United Nations, and in recent times it has outperformed the United States as a player in New York. Now China faces a new test: to step up and assume the responsibilities that are incumbent upon a global power.

Since Beijing acquired China's seat at the UN from Taipei in 1971, it has steadily joined specialist organs and acceded to treaties. To the leaders in Zhongnanhai, the world began to look less like "two camps" and more like one big tent--and they wanted to be inside rather than outside of it. This process accelerated from the mid-1990s, as the country shed the garb of a historical victim and began to don the robes of a great power.

There is plenty of debate among China watchers about Beijing's ultimate strategic ends; however, deeper engagement with the United Nations is plainly one of the means it is employing. The UN provides a forum in which China can promote its security and economic interests--one that Washington cannot dominate. Its structural design tends to mitigate unipolarity: the United States is one of a multitude in the General Assembly, and even in the Security Council chamber it is, at best, first among equals.

China's new approach can be discerned in its behavior on the Council, where it is the only permanent Asian member. Historically, China was a passive, even defensive, Council member, rarely seeking to shape the agenda or draft resolutions. China used its veto much less frequently than any other permanent member (registering about one-twentieth of the number of American vetoes since 1971, for instance) and generally did not participate in or abstained from voting on sensitive issues unless the Taiwan question was involved. The votes China did cast were often preceded by a pro forma statement that no precedent was thereby established.

In the past decade, however, China's representatives have behaved more confidently in the Council chamber and more volubly before the media. China is increasingly willing to take the lead on issues and behave more like a normal great power--and it is being treated as such by other Council members, including the United States. Traditionally, China is wary of being isolated, finding security in numbers on issues such as Kosovo, Iraq and Iran, but this may be gradually changing. On Darfur, for example, China led the forces opposed to sanctions against Khartoum. In the past fifteen years, China has partly overcome its allergy to resolutions passed under Chapter VII of the UN...