Mine ban policy overview

Policy

The People’s Republic of China has not acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty.

At the treaty’s Third Review Conference in June 2014, China stated that “given its national conditions and national defense needs China still could not accede to the convention at this stage” repeating a similar statement made at the Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in Geneva in December 2013, and previous meetings.[1] China stated that it “ascribes to the goal and principles” of the treaty and “highly appreciates the humanitarian embodied within the convention.”[2]

China did not participate in the Ottawa Process, but it has attended all of the Mine Ban Treaty’s Review Conferences held in 2004, 2009, and 2014 as well as most of the treaty’s Meetings of States Parties and many of the intersessional meetings held in Geneva, including in April 2014.

On 5 December 2013, China voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 68/30, calling for universalization and full implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty, as it has every year since 2005.

China’s policy toward the Mine Ban Treaty and other humanitarian issues is reviewed by an interministerial committee, the China National Committee of International Humanitarian Law, which meets every two years and is chaired by the Vice-Premier and includes the foreign ministry among others.[3]

China is not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It is a party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Amended Protocol II on landmines.

Production, transfer, and use

In the past, China was one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of antipersonnel mines.[4] Since 1997, antipersonnel mine production in China has been limited to mines with self-destruct and self-deactivation mechanisms which are compliant with CCW Amended Protocol II.[5] Officials told the Monitor in 2008 that production facilities were either idle, permanently closed, or converted to manufacture other products.[6] In 2012, a Foreign Ministry official informed the Monitor that there was no ongoing large-scale production of antipersonnel mines, but a small number of new antipersonnel mines were produced for research purposes by the military.[7]

In 1996, China announced a formal moratorium on the export of any mines that do not comply with Amended Protocol II. In practice, China is not known to have exported any type of antipersonnel mine since that time. Recently manufactured, Chinese-made, remotely-delivered Type-84 antivehicle mines were used in Libya in 2011 and in Syria in April 2014.[8]

In June 2014, Chinese representatives informed the Monitor that no new antipersonnel mines have been used in the country in the past decade and acknowledged antipersonnel mines no longer play a prominent role in China’s defense doctrine.[9] Previously, in 2012, a Foreign Ministry official confirmed that no new minefields had been laid.[10] In 2011, a Chinese official noted that the country maintains a small number of minefields “for national defence.”[11]

Stockpiling and destruction

In June 2014, China informed Landmine Monitor that it currently stockpiles five million antipersonnel mines, a great reduction from the 110 million previously cited by the Monitor.[12] Chinese officials have often disputed that estimate, but it wasn’t until a meeting with Landmine Monitor in June 2014 that Chinese representatives clarified for the record that the current stockpile is less than 5 million antipersonnel mines.[13] In a statement to the Third Review Conference, China said it has destroyed “several hundred thousand old and dysfunctional” antipersonnel mines “over the last two decades” and said “only a very limited number of [CCW] protocol compliant [antipersonnel mines] were kept for defense purpose.”[14]

China has reported annually on the destruction of antipersonnel mines since the late 1990s, but has not provided details on the numbers and types destroyed.[15]