China's Global Security Initiative: Xi's wedge in the U.S.-led order

PAK YIU

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HONG KONG -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's nearly two-hour speech to more than 2,000 delegates at this year's Communist Party congress was filled with familiar refrains. Written into his work report for the first time, however, was the Global Security Initiative (GSI), signaling an important theme in his precedent-breaking third term.

"An ancient Chinese philosopher observed that 'all living things may grow side by side without harming one another, and different roads may run in parallel without interfering with one another,'" Xi said in his work report. "Only when all countries pursue the cause of common good, live in harmony and engage in cooperation for mutual benefit will there be sustained prosperity and guaranteed security."

It is "in this spirit," according to Xi, that China has launched the GSI.

But what is it?

As with China's other lofty global programs -- the Belt and Road Initiative for building infrastructure and the Global Development Initiative for helping emerging nations confront poverty and other challenges -- the nascent GSI is heavy on verbiage and light on concrete details. When he announced it at the Boao Forum for Asia in April, Xi said the GSI would provide a framework of principles for global affairs and diplomacy that could make the world a safer place.

In Chinese state media, the GSI is described as "another global public good offered by China" that will contribute "Chinese solutions and wisdom for solving security challenges facing humanity." In the context of the GSI, Chinese leaders and diplomats speak of security issues in the broadest sense -- not just defense but also food, climate, supply chains, the internet, trade and energy.

Experts say that while the new initiative is vague, it is not inconsequential.

For Asia, "it's really about trying to propose an alternative regional security architecture," said Jacob Stokes, senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank, "one that moves away from the historical system, or the postwar system of U.S. alliances and partnerships."

Experts say Beijing aims to formalize many of the security-related endeavors and relationships it has been pursuing for years under one umbrella. Not only that, but scholars see the GSI as a reflection of how Xi and company view the world.

From China's perspective, "there's a huge concern that the world is not secure," said Henry Wang, president of the Beijing think tank Center for China and Globalization.

Many, including the U.S., would surely agree. The difference lies in who is responsible for that insecurity and what to do about it.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called China "the most serious long-term challenge to the international order." China, in turn, argues that it is the U.S. and its allies that are the "destabilizing" force. And it looks intent on using the GSI to push this narrative across the Asia-Pacific region and as far away as Africa and South America.

A paramilitary policeman stands outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing before the Communist Party's congress on Oct. 16. From Central Asia to the Solomon Islands, China is offering to train law enforcement personnel. © Reuters

While novel in name, the stage was set years ago when Beijing sought to create a "community of common destiny," first mentioned during then-President Hu Jintao's report to the party congress in 2012.

"They've been very carefully constructing this new basically Asian and then global order. Right from that time, they sort of laid down the fundamental principles, and they're filling in the details as they go along," said David Arase, resident professor of international politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, part of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Now Beijing has settled on "six commitments," as Foreign Minister Wang Yi explained in April. They include: staying committed to comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security; respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; abiding by the principles of the United Nations Charter; taking seriously the legitimate security concerns of all countries; peacefully resolving disputes through dialogue; and maintaining security in both traditional and nontraditional domains.

All this, Wang said, "improves and goes beyond the Western theory of geopolitical security."

Beijing's support for Russia and its refusal to condemn the invasion of Ukraine would seem to contradict some of these tenets. But within the framework of the six commitments, China also pushes the notion of "indivisible security."

"Security of one country should not come at the expense of that of others, and security of a region cannot be ensured by strengthening or even expanding military blocs," Wang said.

This jibes with Russia's justification for the war. Indeed, President Vladimir Putin himself used the term "indivisible security" in his speech announcing the invasion in February. The GSI, foreign diplomacy experts say, helps China legitimize the argument that it was the U.S. and NATO that provoked the war in Ukraine.

Beijing is looking far and wide for endorsements, tapping into simmering discontent with the global governance system. At the BRICS summit in June, Xi urged his Brazilian, Russian, Indian and South African counterparts to work with China "to operationalize the GSI and bring more stability and positive energy to the world."

The previous month, Wang found receptive responses from Uruguay's foreign minister, who said the GSI is "highly consistent" with the country's foreign policy philosophy, and Nicaragua's, who said his nation wanted to join, according to Chinese readouts.

China's envoys have also taken to the pages of local newspapers to champion the initiative, from Kenya's Sunday Nation to the Solomon Islands' Solomon Star, describing the GSI in terms such as "a new concept of security that can replace confrontation and zero-sum mentality with dialogue, partnership and win-win results."

One trend that China watchers see as coming under the GSI is the spread of Chinese-style law enforcement and security practices.

Surveillance cameras in Hong Kong. China is exporting the equipment it uses to monitor its own population. © Reuters

In October, a group of 32 police officers from the Solomon Islands flew to China to study policing techniques. China also said it would build a law enforcement training complex in Tajikistan, after Xi offered to train thousands of officers and establish an anti-terrorism instruction facility for member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

China is exporting equipment it uses to monitor and control its own population as well, raising concerns that other governments could replicate the kind of repression and surveillance seen in places like Xinjiang and increasingly Hong Kong.

More than 3 million closed-circuit TV cameras supplied by China's Hikvision are connected to the internet 24 hours a day in 33,000 cities around the world. Chinese companies such as Huawei have supplied over 160 "smart city" packages in more than 100 countries and regions.

"That's really about using those tools and the security apparatus of the state for, you know, regimes' security and stability in the country," said Stokes at CNAS.

Another objective of the GSI, he added, is to create a shield against sanctions. China vehemently opposes Western countries' use of such penalties, and after the invasion of Ukraine triggered a slew of sanctions against Russia, Beijing has taken note and wants to make its economy more resilient.

While the GSI is still in its infancy, Manoj Kewalramani, who runs the Indo-Pacific Research Program at the Takshashila Institution in India, anticipates China finding ways to bolster financial security. At the same time, he sees a number of other fields relevant to the GSI. "Anything with regard to food security, what sort of arrangements can [China] arrive at, whether it is land, or seeds -- any of those cooperative arrangements," he suggested. "Energy, that's another area."

China includes all manner of things under its "comprehensive national security" concept -- including the economy, culture, society, science and technology, cybersecurity, the environment, resources, nuclear technology and overseas interests. "You're exporting that vision, that everything has to be looked at [through] a securitized lens," Kewalramani said.

For example, China "is not looking at cyberspace governance from the perspective of individual rights, privacy, data sharing, corporate rights," he said. "They're fundamentally saying this is a matter of sovereignty."

It is through such reasoning and rhetorical exercises that Beijing seeks to establish new norms and apply its domestic national security apparatus to foreign policy, Kewalramani said.

U.S. and Japanese aircraft conduct an exercise. "It's pretty clear that the region trusts the U.S. strategically or securitywise more than they do with China," an expert said. © Reuters

China's complex diplomatic relationships, especially in its own neighborhood, could make the GSI a tough sell. Beijing is locked in territorial disputes with several Southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea. America has an expansive network of military ties that will not be easy to unravel. Many in the region may have looked askance at China's aggressive reaction to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August, which Beijing answered with unprecedented military exercises. And then there is India.

"India is something that Beijing sees as a threat -- not a threat in terms of 'existential,' but as a threat in terms of a potential spoiler in the region that can enable its containment," Kewalramani said.

Nevertheless, an increasingly self-confident China looks set to push its alternate narrative. Political analysts say China's words and demonization of the U.S. should not be dismissed as empty slogans.

"If you look at the kind of relationships the U.S. has in defense and security partnerships, cooperation in the [Asian] region, it's very comprehensive," said the Hopkins-Nanjing Center's Arase. "It's pretty clear that the region trusts the U.S. strategically or securitywise more than they do with China. But you wouldn't know that just listening to China's rhetoric on GSI."

The danger, he said, is when that rhetoric goes unanswered. Much of the world is aware that China's assertive rise is underway, but "there's a real vacuum or lack of critical discourse, in part because nobody wants to question China's narrative," Arase said.

As the U.S.-China gulf widens, many countries already feel compelled to take sides. The GSI could add to that pressure as Beijing asks others to subscribe to its worldview.

"Over the next two, three, four years, you're likely to see the choices of countries in the region be far more constrained," said Kewalramani. "I think it's useful for them to have these discussions domestically and among themselves about what these things are going to mean for our choices in the future."