ARTICLE

Renan Holanda Montenegro

DOI: 10.1590/1981-3821202600020006

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) military footprint is expanding globally, and one of the most notable examples of its contribution to international security is its involvement in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. By examining Chinese deployments to these missions, this article seeks to contribute to understanding the political economy of China’s expanding global military presence. Is China a responsible power or a self-interested, resource-seeking actor in the peacekeeping regime? Relying on an original dataset, the article presents an empirical strategy based on statistical analysis to evaluate both hypotheses, covering more than 30 years of Chinese involvement in UN peacekeeping operations. Economic indicators such as GDP and trade flows are used as independent variables. Although bivariate analysis shows that China’s GDP is strongly associated with personnel deployments, multivariate regression models show that the economic growth of host countries and commodity exports to China are also significant explanatory factors. On the other hand, total exports from host countries are not statistically significant and exhibit a negative, counter-intuitive relationship across all models. In addition to presenting these and other findings, the article offers a brief discussion of their implications.