On 1 October, MINURSO raised China’s flag at the Mission HQ to mark the country’s National Day.
China has been member of the United Nations since its founding in 1945 and holds a permanent seat on the Security Council. The first Chinese military observers joined a UN mission in 1990, but it was in the early 2000s, when the country began to deploy lager numbers of uniformed personnel, including specialized units such as police, engineers, and field hospitals. In 2015, China sent for the first time a full infantry battalion to South Sudan. Nowadays, it is the second largest financial contributor to UN peace operations budget and among the top ten troops contributing countries.
Ten military observers from China serve currently in MINURSO, among them three women [Link].
The National Day commemorates the founding of the People's Republic of China proclaimed in 1949 at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Since then, the flag-raising ceremony at this capital’s landmark has been the most important official act on that day.
謝謝中國！