Can anyone save South Sudan? The country, which collapsed into civil war in 2013, is stumbling into a new cycle of violence. Clashes in the capital, Juba,have claimed hundreds of lives in recent days. The United Nations Security Council has called for calm, and the U.S., which played a leading role in ushering in South Sudan’s independence five years ago, has condemned the violence. Yet the outbreak of fighting poses an especially serious dilemma for another power with significant economic and political interests at stake: China.

Beijing is playing an increasing military and diplomatic role across Africa, as I noted last month. But its influence in South Sudan is particularly pronounced. It is a major consumer of the country’s oil and has invested heavily in efforts to restore order since 2013. Breaking with its cautious approach to international stabilization missions, China deployed a combat battalion to Juba under U.N. command last year. Behind the scenes, Chinese diplomats have put huge pressure on local officials not only to step back from violence but also to cut back on corruption.

Beijing has already paid a human cost for its engagement as the violence surged: Two of its peacekeepers were killed after a shell hit their vehicle in Juba on Sunday.

If the fighting gets worse, the Chinese battalion will be in the frontline of attempts to protect U.N. personnel and other foreign civilians in the capital. If the conflict escalates, Beijing will have to deal not only with these tactical concerns, but also with some bigger strategic questions. Is it prepared to risk its diplomatic credibility by playing a major public role in attempting to restore peace? Will it be willing to dispatch more troops to South Sudan to help police any new cease-fire agreement?

If China is not ready to take a greater role in the crisis, it is not clear who can. While members of the Obama administration such as National Security Adviser Susan Rice were longtime advocates of South Sudan’s independence, they have struggled to keep a grip on the state they created. President Barack Obama has a notoriously prickly relationship with his South Sudanese counterpart, Salva Kiir. A number of European powers, led by the U.K., also have long-standing interests in the country. But while Britain has committed peacekeepers to South Sudan it is hard to imagine that officials in London will have time to think about Africa while they prepare for Brexit, or Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.

A group of regional African leaders, with Ethiopia in the lead, helped broker a deal to end the civil war last year. Yet their diplomatic efforts were slow and unwieldy. Some of the powers involved, including Uganda and Sudan, also participated in fueling the conflict. The African Union is trying to beef up its role in crisis management on the continent, but it backed away from sending troops to Burundi at the start of this year, and might struggle to set up a large new stabilization mission in South Sudan.

That leaves the existing U.N. mission in the country, UNMISS, of which the Chinese are part, to provide what security it can. Unfortunately, the operation is profoundly and possibly irredeemably flawed. Launched in 2011 to support the post-independence government, it was caught off-guard by the 2013 crisis. While the Security Council authorized the deployment of 5,000 reinforcements, the U.N. took a full year to do so. While UNMISS has protected civilians on its bases throughout the chaos, many peacekeepers seem unable or unwilling to take the mandate seriously. Fighting at one camp in February left at least 30 dead, but the U.N. troops remained passive.

Hannah Donges, a researcher who visited the U.N. protection sites earlier this year, reports that “of those needing protection, only a fraction have made it inside these boundaries and many vulnerable citizens remain outside these sprawling tent cities.” The U.N.’s recurring nightmare is that one of the camps will be the scene of a Srebrenica-style massacre. The mission has already reported that its facilities in Juba have come under fire from heavy weapons in the latest violence, stoking such fears.

So while Western, African and U.N. officials are calling for an end to violence in South Sudan, the country’s fractious leaders are unlikely to pay them much heed. It is very far from certain that China can resolve the crisis, but it may not be able to avoid a central role in it. U.N. officials have privately told American diplomats in the past that the best way to get anything done in South Sudan is to get the Chinese to push for it.

Beijing may not enjoy its newfound importance. It prefers to present its role in Africa as part of an upbeat, “win-win” foreign policy, and still claims to believe in non-interference in other states’ affairs. As Mathieu Duchatel, Manuel Lafont Rapnouil and I observed in a recent paper for the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), “Chinese officials argue that its deployment of combat troops tasked with the protection of civilians does not compromise the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs, so long as it remains within the framework of U.N. peacekeeping.” Such arguments are increasingly untenable in cases such as South Sudan, where the U.N. must either take a harder line with local leaders or go home.

Despite its inherent caution, Beijing may finally have to dispense with its rhetoric of non-interference and take some real political risks if it wants to preserve its stake in South Sudan. This would mean making a serious diplomatic push in Juba, in coordination with African powers and the West, and offering to put more troops on the ground to back it up. Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping offered the U.N. up to 8,000 new peacekeepers to help handle crises. They would come in handy right now.

Some analysts wonder whether Chinese diplomats have the knowledge and training necessary to manage a complex mediation process. In addition, Chinese soldiers do not have the sort of combat experience they will need to navigate increased violence in South Sudan. So a big push by Beijing to stabilize South Sudan could backfire badly. But if China tries to sit out the rising crisis, it will suddenly look uncomfortably like a paper tiger in Africa.