BEIJING, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- The remains of eight Chinese police officers killed in last week's major earthquake in Haiti were flown back to Beijing Tuesday.
Since China's first participation in UN-led peacekeeping missions in April 1990, when it sent military observers to the Middle East, some 16 Chinese peacekeepers have contributed with their lives to world peace.
In April 1992, the Chinese government dispatched a military engineering unit to Cambodia to repair roads, maintain airports, build barracks and other engineering support tasks. It was the first time that China sent a non-combat blue berets unit in UN peacekeeping missions.
Since then, Chinese peacekeepers have been seen in many restive regions and countries across the world, including East Timor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Haiti, Sudan and Lebanon.
So far, China has sent more than 14,000 peacekeepers on 24 UN missions. At present, China is the country who contributes the most peacekeepers among permanent UN Security Council member countries, with 2,100 Chinese peacekeepers working in 10 task areas for UN peacekeeping missions.
In January 2000, at the request of the United Nations, China started to dispatch peacekeeping policemen to East Timor. Since then, Chinese peacekeeping policemen have become an important part of its overseas peacekeeping operations.
In October 2004, China sent to Haiti a formed police unit of 125 people.
Up to January 2010, China has contributed 1,569 peacekeeping policemen to seven UN peacekeeping task areas in Asia, Africa, Europe and America. At present, some 190 peacekeeping policemen are working in East Timor, Liberia, Sudan and Haiti.
Up to November 2009, Chinese peacekeeping units had built and repaired 8,000 kilometers of roads and more than 200 bridges, cleared 8,700 land mines and explosives, transported 430,000 tons of materials and treated more than 60,000 patients.
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