BEIJING — The chairman of the Libyan opposition’s executive board, Mahmoud Jibril, will visit Beijing for talks on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Monday, in the latest sign that China is hedging its bet on the survival of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government in Tripoli.

The Chinese government has criticized NATO’s air campaign in Libya as excessive and called for a cease-fire, although China abstained instead of exercising its veto when the United Nations Security Council voted in March to authorize the NATO action.

China has a record of insisting on international respect for the sovereignty of all countries, including pariah governments in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea, all of which are trading partners for China.

The Chinese government has long resented foreign criticism of its own human rights record, particularly the Tiananmen Square military crackdown in 1989, and generally opposes criticism of what other countries do within their borders as well.