China will create an 8,000-strong peacekeeping “police squad” that could be deployed at short notice on UN peacekeeping missions, President Xi Jinping told the UN General Assembly.

The pledge appears to be part of China’s effort to show itself as a rising but responsible global player in the face of continued concern about its territorial ambitions.

“China will join the new UN peacekeeping capability readiness system, and has thus decided to lead in setting up a permanent peacekeeping police squad and build a peacekeeping standby force of 8,000 troops,” President Xi said.

As of last April, China had 2,637 peacekeepers deployed around the world in place such as South Sudan, Mali, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Li Xiuhua, deputy director of the peacekeeping affairs department at China’s ministry of defence. Rather than belonging to a single unit, these are all drawn from various units of the PLA, to which they typically return after eight-month deployments.

The largest contingent, currently numbering 1,031, is deployed in South Sudan, where China is a big investor in the oil industry.

“This is quite significant ramp-up in China’s peacekeeping capabilities,” said Chin-Hao Huang, professor of political science at Yale-NUS University in Singapore and an expert on Chinese peacekeeping operations. With the largest army in the world, China’s efforts could go a long way towards alleviating chronic personnel shortages on UN deployments, he said. “What China is capable of contributing is manpower.”

Mr Xi also announced on Monday $100m in funding to the African Union to support a rapid-reaction force, as well as a broader 10-year, $1bn UN-China “peace and development fund”.

The pledges followed Saturday’s promise of $2bn in development assistance for poor nations.

The peacekeeping commitment comes as China eyes an ever-expanding global role, which has seen its navy, for example, operate as far afield as Africa’s coast and the Mediterranean in support of rescue missions. Last month, Chinese warships were even spotted off the coast of Alaska.

Several of China’s neighbours, as well as the US, have voiced concern over Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, while some experts have charged that Beijing’s interest in poor nations is purely mercantile.

Mr Xi was adamant in his speech, however, that China is “committed to peaceful development. No matter how the international landscape may evolve and how strong China may become, China will never pursue hegemony [or] expansion of a sphere of influence.”

Mr Huang said that while “China’s economic interests tend to run in parallel to their peacekeeping deployments . . . one mustn’t forget that these troops are under a UN chain of command, not a Chinese one”.

Both the US and China agreed to increase their commitment to UN peacekeeping during a diplomatic visit by President Xi to Washington last week. Leaders from more than 50 countries pledged some 30,000 troops and police, as well as equipment or training for UN peacekeeping missions.