China's “Responsible Protection” Concept: Reinterpreting the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Military Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes

Abstract

This paper assesses the extent to which the recently formulated Chinese concept of “Responsible Protection” (RP) offers a valuable contribution to the normative debate over R2P's third pillar following the controversy over military intervention in Libya. While RP draws heavily on previous proposals including the 2001 ICISS report and Brazil's “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP), by amalgamating and repackaging these earlier ideas in a more restrictive form the initiative represents a new and distinctive interpretation of R2P. However, some aspects of RP are framed too narrowly to provide workable guidelines for determining the permissibility of military intervention for humanitarian purposes, and should be clarified and refined. Nevertheless, the Chinese proposal remains significant because it offers important insights into Beijing's current stance on R2P. More broadly, China's RP and Brazil's RwP initiatives illustrate the growing willingness of rising, non-Western powers to assert their own normative preferences on sovereignty, intervention, and global governance.