China has defended its non-confrontational policy toward ending violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, saying that critics who link the issue to its hosting of the 2008 Beijing Olympics are either ignorant or are victims of cold war ideology.

In an interview published on the front page of the official China Daily newspaper on Friday, Liu Guijin, China’s special envoy to Darfur, said the international community should remember that Khartoum was a legitimate government that “deserves respect”.