China's Earlier Mediative Efforts

China's increasingly more constructive role on the international arena began way before the 2003 North Korean nuclear crisis threw it into the global limelight as a mediative heavyweight.

According to Hugo Restall in his 2003 article China's Little Help on North Korea, China played "probably the most important role" in the settlement that led to the 1993 U.N.-sponsored elections in Cambodia, as well as the peacekeeping efforts that followed.

China also supported the U.N. resolution which enabled an Australian-led peacekeeping force to consolidate East Timor's independence from Indonesia. Restall noted that just a few years earlier, the move "would have once thrown Beijing into a fit considering its own fear of "splittist" movements."

And in 2002, China's representative to the U.N. not only voted for Resolution 1448 on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but also participated in the drafting, and chaired the session at which the resolution was passed.