In a recent article published by Xinhua, the Paris conference on Libya's future without Muammar Gaddafi was decried as a West-dominated meeting seeking to entrench American and European interests by maintaining a pre-eminent role for Nato. Although the ousting of the Gaddafi regime was initiated by Libyans rather than outside powers, the fact that the National Transitional Council promised 'a new, democratic and pluralistic' government for all Libyans would have created further angst among Beijing's authoritarian leaders.
Indeed, China has appeared caught on the back foot since the rebellion against Gaddafi began in January. More broadly, it has been reminded that its capacity to shape global events is still much more restricted than should be the case for the world's second-largest economy.
At issue is the often praised Chinese policy of non-intervention, or at least the appearance of it. Supporting a traditional notion of sov- ereignty in which established governments have absolute discretion to rule their people in any way they choose, Beijing provides refuge to other dictatorships such as North Korea and Myanmar to stand against what it sees as a Western-led conspiracy among democracies to impose the creed on other states, including China.
China also unquestioningly provides support to other authoritarian powers in order to secure much needed resources and investment markets for itself. For example, about 3 per cent of China's total oil imports came from Libya when Gaddafi was in power. Chinese companies had agreements to build infrastructure worth US$18 billion. Beijing assiduously cultivated a strong relationship with the Gaddafi regime as it does with other authoritarian regimes in Africa and the Middle East to advance its economic interests.
This win-win strategy of non-intervention makes pragmatic sense if the existing regime remains in power. After all, in authoritarian systems, major industries tend to be nationalised and those governments exercise strong influence over the most important and valuable sectors in the economy - a model Beijing knows extremely well.
But China's non-interventionist approach works less well when authoritarian regimes are destabilised. The timeline of China's response to the Libyan crisis bears this out.