By Kashif Anwar
Beijing wants to weaken U.S. alliances and push its internal security model overseas to protect China‘s domestic stability and CCP control, as much has changed since October 2022. After significant public outcry, the CCP quickly reversed its draconian “zero COVID” rules. China’s post-pandemic economic rebound has been stalled due to its clampdown on foreign enterprises and weak development. Beijing’s attitude on the Ukraine war has raised tensions with Europe, one of China’s biggest trading partners. China remains committed to security at home and abroad. Early signs from Xi’s third term show that regime security concerns will continue to govern Chinese foreign policy, raising tensions with Western nations and some of China’s neighbours. Xi’s aim to neutralise all threats to CCP rule is paradoxical because maintaining regime security requires China to become more assertive internationally.
Strong at all fronts
In his “work report” to the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, Xi Jinping reminded listeners that before he became China’s leader, national security was “inadequate” and “insufficient.” He declared countries national security is “strengthened on all fronts” a decade after adopting his comprehensive national security concept. He called national security “the bedrock of national rejuvenation” and said China would strengthen its “legal, strategy, and policy systems” for it. Xi implied that his approach will shape Chinese security policy for at least five years and possibly longer.
At the May 2023 meeting of the Central National Security Commission (CNSC), which implements Xi’s concept, China’s leaders reaffirmed their commitment to comprehensive national security. As the CNSC approved risk-monitoring, early warning, public education, and national security documents at the meeting. Xi urged attendees to understand China’s “complex and severe” national security environment and accelerate national security system modernization.
These themes have been prevalent in Chinese national security documents and speeches under Xi. Since 2015, China has celebrated “national security education day” on April 15, the first anniversary of the comprehensive national security concept. Xi’s October 2022 report and the CNSC’s approval of related documents suggest that the CCP is implementing policies around these issues.
Xi’s recent personnel appointments suggest the CCP will maintain its national security policy. Internal security experience is now required for political advancement in China. Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang, Zhao Leji and Li Qianghave worked in China’s political-legal apparatus or in the party’s discipline and supervision system, which Xi reorganised and empowered to ensure party control over China’s security forces. Xi Jinping has long considered corruption elimination and party control over the military and coercive apparatus crucial to regime security. A national security leadership team with experience in public security, party discipline, and Xi’s approach to national security suggests that these forces will increasingly work together to uphold CCP rule.
Security above all
Xi Jinping’s state security obsession is expected. Reuters and the New York Times reported that Chinese authorities discovered and disrupted a CIA informant network before Xi took power. The infamous Document No. 9 – one of Xi’s first official documents – warned that the Western values and ideology could destabilise China. The 2021 CCP Central Committee resolution on party history warned of “encirclement, suppression, disruption, and subversion.” According to China scholars Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil, Xi’s rule has been marked by an ongoing anti-spy campaign and warnings about foreign infiltration.
Xi Jinping views internal and external security as interconnected, believing many of China’s internal stability threats come from abroad. Xi’s fear of external forces infiltrating China has driven even domestic security measures like the party’s mass repression of ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Thus, Xi has gradually tightened its control over religious groups, nongovernmental organisations, and most recently foreign businesses that could spread foreign influence.
As China’s economy and society are securitized for reasons beyond foreign infiltration. The CCP has rethought economics-security relations under Xi Jinping. Xi and other top officials now prioritise security over economic growth. Xi mentioned a “new security pattern” to protect China’s “new development pattern” in the October 2022 party work report and the May CNSC meeting. This rhetoric reveals China’s foreign policy direction. Xi and other senior party leaders want to ensure that foreign powers don’t cripple China’s economic security and slow its progress toward “national rejuvenation” by shifting toward greater economic self-sufficiency.
Beijing has said less about its new security pattern than its new development pattern, but its officials have indicated its importance and reach. In April, State Security Minister Chen Yixin called it “the main task of national security work in the present and the future.” At the May 2023 CNSC meeting, Xi urged the party officials to “take the initiative to shape a favourable external security environment for China.” Despite Xi’s vague directive, China is seeking to strengthen its position abroad while justifying its more assertive behaviour as defensive. Xi believes China must improve international conditions to defend his regime. Xi’s preventive theory of regime security and his view of threats revolve around this paradox: defensive ends at home require increasingly assertive means abroad.
Xi Jinping’s Gamble
Xi Jinping prefers the April 2022 Global Security Initiative to promote comprehensive national security that seeks regime security through foreign policy. Chinese analysts described the GSI to balance China’s “domestic security and the common security of the world.” The GSI concept paper begins with “Xi’s new vision of security announced in 2014,” a possible reference to the comprehensive national security concept. In his October 2022 work report, Xi called political security – the CCP, its leaders, and its system – “the fundamental task” and international security “a support.”As the concept paper is vague, giving the Chinese political system time to develop initiatives. However, it echoes comprehensive national security concept’s core principles – the indivisibility of security and development and domestic and common international security -and then lists a long list of well-known regional and global security challenges.
As Beijing wants to bypass or downplay the US alliance system to limit Washington’s ability to contain China or foment “colour revolutions” inside the country. The GSI recognises the UN, for instance, in this new security architecture. It also seeks to create new regional and global security orders that benefit the CCP. China brokered a reconciliation agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023, which was publicised on the GSI’s first anniversary.
In November 2022, China hosted the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum, a global law enforcement conference andis exporting its domestic security and social stability model. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Public Security hosted 108 nations at the “Peaceful China” summit in 2021 to demonstrate its policing and surveillance methods. The GSI offers police and law enforcement training to those who want to follow China’s example portraying China as a model of domestic security and normalise its approach abroad. Internal security officials in China are becoming diplomats to support these efforts. Chen Wenqing, chair of the Central Political-Legal Commission, attended a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence meeting of regional intelligence officials in 2021 and met with Russia’s National Security Council’s head Nikolai Patrushev in May 2023.Suggesting China is fulfilling its February 2022 promise to cooperate to fight colour revolutions and “attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability.” Conventional wisdom suggests that economic headwinds may cause China to look outside for growth. As Chinese authorities have tried to portray a new development pattern as compatible with economic openness. Xi Jinping believes securitization, not economic growth, guarantees regime security, so he is willing to pay higher economic costs to tighten control at home and improve China’s security abroad. Economic woes can threaten regime stability, but Xi Jinping seems determined.
The Window of Necessity
China’s GSI efforts to externalise comprehensive national security pose serious challenges for the US. Due to Chinese officials’ efforts and many world leaders’ perception of a lack of good alternatives, policymakers should not underestimate Beijing’s approach’s potential. The US has too often defended an international security order that others see as excluding them or failing to solve their biggest problems. The US has chastised nations for accepting China’s solutions without offering alternatives.
China’s focus on building new forums and networks in areas where international order is weak or absent, such as crime, terrorism, and domestic unrest, presents an opportunity for the US. Washington can cooperate with countries dissatisfied with the global security architecture and offer them an alternative to China’s revisionist approach and the US alternatives should manage expectations.The U.S. security assistance in Asia, which is mostly military, leaves a gap in addressing the region’s many non-traditional security challenges, which China’s Ministry of Public Security and the GSI have offered to fill.
In the short term, Beijing will likely succeed in marketing itself as a “security partner of choice” to repressive leaders whose main security threats are their own people and who like China’s authoritarian model. The Cold War taught the US that security partnerships without broad popular support can be risky and even fail. If the US acts quickly, a positive alternative to China’s plan to address the non-traditional security challenges could change international institutions and norms. The Biden administration has focused on strengthening its existing coalition.It should complement this approach by seeking to shore up ties with nations that have not always had close ties with the US. As China pushes for a new security order aimed at cementing long-term CCP control, the US will miss key windows of opportunity to build that architecture unless it adopts a more proactive strategy.
The author is Research Associate, Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi.
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