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China’s first infantry contribution to a United Nations peacekeeping force will depart for South Sudan in January, the state news media has reported.

The move is widely seen as a sign of greater Chinese commitment to United Nations peacekeeping efforts and of Beijing’s wishes to step up protection of its commercial interests in the country.

The Chinese battalion includes 121 officers and 579 enlisted soldiers, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported on Monday. A first contingent is scheduled to arrive in South Sudan in January, and the rest will follow in March. The battalion will be equipped with drones, antitank missiles and other weapons “completely for self-defense purposes,” Xinhua quoted the unit’s commander, Wang Zhen, as saying.



China sends first 700 strong infantry battalion to South Sudan for peacekeeping //t.co/j7ntgpKrCR //t.co/9Br57PQYpq — China Xinhua News (@XHNews) 22 Dec 14

“The 700 Chinese troops will be based in the national capital of Juba” and the surrounding state of Central Equatoria, Joseph Contreras, a spokesman for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, said in emailed comments on Monday.

South Sudan remains one of the world’s most troubled regions as fighting between the forces of President Salva Kiir and the former vice president, Riek Machar, has killed and displaced thousands of people, as well as threatened the country’s economic lifeline, oil.

Since the outbreak of violence in December 2013, diplomats have pointed to increasingly active Chinese diplomacy to broker a cease-fire. China’s Ministry of National Defense first confirmed the planned deployment of the battalion in September. It will reinforce the 10,262 military peacekeepers currently stationed in South Sudan, who include infantry forces from India, Kenya and Ethiopia.

Of the dozens of countries that have contributed peacekeeping forces, however, China is the only one with major commercial interests at stake.

The state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, the country’s largest oil and gas producer, has invested billions of dollars since the 1990s in what are now South Sudanese oil fields. Before fighting disrupted production, those oil fields provided a rapidly developing China with about 5 percent of its imported oil.

China’s concern regarding South Sudan is not energy security per se, “but rather a corporate investment from a major Chinese national oil company in jeopardy,” Luke Patey, the author of “The New Kings of Crude: China, India and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan,” said in an interview.

“Since the conflict shut down half of its production, now roughly at 160,000 barrels per day, China only receives 1 percent of its oil imports from South Sudan,” he said.

The country’s main oil fields, and Chinese investments, are concentrated in states north of Central Equatoria, where the battalion is expected to be deployed. However, United Nations peacekeeping forces in South Sudan do now have a responsibility to protect employees of oil fields, after lobbying from China with support from other countries, the magazine Foreign Policy reported last summer. China also initially wanted peacekeepers to be deployed in the country’s northern states, according to the magazine.

In May, the United Nations Security Council changed the mandate of its peacekeeping mission from a focus on nation-building to the protection of civilians and ending civil strife. The new mandate, which has since been extended, included the first “mention of oil industry workers as civilians who might warrant protection” by the force, Mr. Contreras said.

China’s deployment of this battalion “runs parallel with its interest in ensuring billions of its oil investments in South Sudan stay out of harm’s way,” Mr. Patey, the author, said, adding that the South Sudanese government also wants United Nations peacekeepers to protect the country’s most vital economic assets.

On Monday, C.N.P.C. announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with South Sudan’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mining to increase oil production in three oil exploration and production blocks, a move that “further deepens China-South Sudan oil cooperation,” the company said.

But Mr. Patey said the agreement was “a long-term goal,” rather than a concrete plan. It would require “large amounts of investment which undoubtedly will not start to flow into South Sudan until the civil war comes to an end,” he said.

China has contributed personnel for United Nations peacekeeping forces since the 1990s, including sending engineering, security and medical personnel to South Sudan. This will be the first time it has sent an infantry battalion, a step its foreign minister has suggested is in line with China’s expanding participation in peacekeeping.

In a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York in September, Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke of a greater role for China.

In addition to its first deployment of an infantry battalion, China is “considering” making helicopters and, for the first time, air force personnel available, Mr. Wang said.