Yemen Evacuation Shows Chinese Navy’s Growing Role
China evacuated nearly 600 of its citizens from conflict-torn Yemen this week in Chinese warships, in a demonstration of Beijing’s increasing ability to extract its people from dangerous places.
Only a few Chinese remain in the country, the Chinese ambassador to Yemen, Tian Qi, , the state news agency, on Monday night. He described the operation, which included harrowing road trips from the capital, Sana, to the port of Al Hudaydah, as “a significant practice of major power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.”
Although the Yemen effort was on a much smaller scale than the evacuation of about 35,800 Chinese workers from Libya in 2011, it involved two Chinese Navy frigates, accompanied by a navy supply vessel, docking at ports in Yemen and carrying the Chinese evacuees away. In Libya, after the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, China largely relied on rented cruise ships and cargo vessels, with one navy vessel overseeing the operation.
The first group of 122 Chinese workers boarded a frigate in Aden, the major port city of Yemen, on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Tian told Xinhua. A second group of 449 Chinese boarded another frigate in Al Hudaydah, on Yemen’s west coast, on Monday, he said. Both ships , and from there, the workers were being flown to China.
The evacuation operation would play well in China, said Lyle Goldstein, associate professor at the United States Naval War College in Newport, R.I. “The audience is likely Chinese domestic politics,” Mr. Goldstein said. “It has become very common for Chinese to demand that Chinese nationals be protected abroad more forcefully by the government. Thus, in the Yemen case, two frigates can easily be dispatched to ‘show the flag,’ but without incurring major risks or somehow pushing the operational envelope.”
Champions of the fast-expanding Chinese Navy would also be pleased, Mr. Goldstein said. “The crisis may be somewhat useful to the growing chorus of Chinese ‘navalists,’ who will argue that having a Chinese Navy that operates routinely on all the world’s oceans is critical to protecting the interests of this maritime trade juggernaut,” he said.
Chinese online comments expressed support for the operation. One commenter on Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblogging platform, wrote: “The strength of the motherland is not about the visa-free agreements with other countries, but that it could bring you home from danger.”
Another wrote: “You can’t even imagine things like this if the country is not strong enough.”
Op-Ed: China’s speedy evacuation from #Yemen demonstrates responsibility, humanism http://t.co/Dg3Zfp9LF7 http://t.co/UmdCrfIj0o
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The two frigates were diverted from duties off Somalia, where China has been participating in international antipiracy operations since 2008. Given the Chinese Navy’s familiarity with the waters around the Horn of Africa and nearby Yemen, the evacuation was likely to have been a relatively easy task, Mr. Goldstein said.
The Chinese workers trapped in Yemen as the government collapsed said conditions had deteriorated rapidly. Many of the Chinese were involved in oil exploration, others in construction and fishing. Yemen provides oil to China but is not a major supplier.
A Chinese medical worker, Yang Shiyong, who was in Yemen when a Shiite Houthi militia backed by Iran toppled the government, said he was startled by the strength of the militia’s firepower against airstrikes led by Saudi Arabia. The Houthis deployed surface-to-air weapons near the house in Sana where his medical team stayed, he said.
“It was the first time since I came to Yemen that I saw such intensive artillery fire,” Mr. Yang told Xinhua. “The antiaircraft fire out there looked like some flaming snakes, that went on for hours.”
Mr. Tian, the ambassador, said the 140-mile drive from Sana to Al Hudaydah over treacherous mountain roads was particularly difficult. The Chinese workers were scattered in small groups in more than a dozen different areas of Yemen, though many were working in construction in Sana, an ancient desert city of two million.
Mr. Tian said that China was not abandoning Yemen and that the embassy in Sana and the consulate in Aden would remain open.
Yufan Huang contributed research.
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