Shogo Suzuki

　　To many analysts of China, it is a common assumption that China covets an equal status with the Great Powers of the international community, and harbours considerable frustration towards its perceived status. We are told that there exists a powerful sentiment that the 'Chinese nation deserves a much better fate than that which it has experienced in the modern world.' In this paper, I seek to examine the process by which Beijing attempts to improve its social standing in the international community. I do so by focusing on China's participation in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. While China's attempts to seek 'prestige' from its peers has been noted elsewhere, most of these works do not focus on the process, and neither do they examine the role the Chinese military plays in it. I hope to demonstrate that the so-called 'rise of China' need not be threatening to international order, and that the military - once seen as a bastion of hard-line nationalism - may be playing a surprisingly constructive role than imagined.