China’s Global Security Initiative
China’s Global Security Initiative
The security of each is rooted in the common security of all
On February 21, 2023, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published “The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper” on its Website. The document follows up on Chinese President Xi Jinping´s proposal for a Global Security Initiative, made by Xi in a keynote address via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference on April 21, 2022. (See “China’s Xi Jinping has a better plan,” April 26, 2022).
The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper
“The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper” begins with the observation that, in spite of the challenges and threats of the current historic moment, “we are convinced that the historical trends of peace, development and win-win cooperation are unstoppable.” The paper seeks to explain the concepts, principles, and priorities of the Global Security Initiative, initially proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014.
The essence of Xi’s vision, the concept paper notes, is the common security of all, in which the legitimate security concerns of every country are taken seriously, respected, and safeguarded. The “security of one country should not come at the expense of that of others.” Security, therefore, is indivisible; a differentiation ought not be made between individual and common security. “Any country, while pursuing its own security, should take into account the reasonable security concerns of others.”
Common security is attained through political dialogue and peaceful negotiation. “War and sanctions are no fundamental solution to disputes; only dialogue and consultation are effective in resolving differences.”
Constant commitment to the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of nations is fundamental. “We believe all countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community.”
The concept paper stresses the importance of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. It describes the United Nations as “humanity’s institutional design for collective security and lasting peace.” It maintains that “the various confrontations and injustices in the world today did not occur because the purposes and principles of the UN Charter are outdated, but because they are not effectively maintained and implemented. We call on all countries to . . . firmly uphold the international system with the UN at its core.”
China commits herself to the implementation of the vision formulated in the Global Security Initiative. “China is ready to conduct bilateral and multilateral security cooperation with all countries and international and regional organizations under the framework of the Global Security Initiative.”
The concept paper expresses opposition to weapons of mass destruction. It maintains that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” It supports the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and it calls for the strengthening of dialogue among nuclear-weapons states to reduce the risk of nuclear war. At the same time, it supports UN conventions on chemical and biological weapons, and it calls for the complete prohibition and destruction of said weapons.
The concept paper supports regional security cooperation structures being developed in East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pacific island countries. In particular, it highlighted the 2014 CELAC Summit in Havana, which proclaimed Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace; it expressed its support for the efforts of CELAC and other regional organizations in upholding regional peace. In addition, it called for a just solution to the Palestinian question, emphasizing the advancement of the two-state solution.
The concept paper called for strengthening the UN role in addressing terrorism, and it expressed support for UN efforts against organized crime and in controlling drugs. It referred to proposals and position papers put forth by China with respect to information security, biosecurity, international governance on artificial intelligence, and international cooperation on outer space.
The paper expressed support for the leading role being played by the World Health Organization and for the existing cooperation among countries in addressing climate change. It endorsed various platforms and mechanisms of cooperation being developed in the world.
“The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper” concluded:
“China stands ready to work with all countries and peoples who love peace and aspire to happiness to address all kinds of traditional and non-traditional security challenges, protect the peace and tranquility of the earth, and jointly create a better future for mankind, so that the torch of peace will be passed on from generation to generation and shine across the world.”
Reflections
Since the agricultural revolution, which occurred independently in seven or eight regions of the world five to ten thousand years ago, advances in human civilizations were constructed on a foundation of conquest. China was a partial exception to this prevailing tendency, in that beyond the territories directly controlled by the Chinese state, China developed extensive commercial relations that were the foundation of its great civilizations, which were the most advanced civilizations of their time.
The historic prevailing human pattern of development on a foundation of conquest—which I call the dialectic of domination and development—reached advanced expression from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, when seven Western European nations conquered and/or attained at least indirect control of virtually the entire planet. The modern capitalist world-economy came into being, characterized by great advances in technological development, but also by extreme global inequality, as vast peripheralized regions functioned to supply natural resources, cheap raw materials, forced labor, and markets for the advancing economies of the core. During the nineteenth century, the once-great Chinese empire was compelled to accept humiliating concessions to the geographically expanding Western European colonial empires, in the form of “unequal treaties” that established European commerce in key port cities, which led to the economic decline of China.
During the course of the twentieth century, the colonized peoples of the earth rose in rebellion and revolution. The most successful of them did not attempt restoration of the pre-conquest and pre-colonial order. Rather, they embraced the most radical of the Western proclamations—pronounced in word by the West but not implemented in deed—integrating these Western conceptualizations with their traditional values and their struggles for national liberation from Western colonial domination.
The Chinese Revolution, which led to the establishment of the People’s Republic, pertained to the twentieth century anti-colonial revolutionary process, but with important exceptions. China had been a great empire and advanced civilization, and its colonization was merely partial. Except for certain coastal regions, it had not been geographically fragmented. Although impoverished by the partial Western economic penetration, it remained one of the largest economies of the world. Under these conditions, it was able to lift up exceptional leaders who renewed the nation on a modern foundation, culminating in the establishment of the largest and most dynamic economy in the world. In this process of renewal, it forged new human advancements in understanding with respect to the characteristics of democratic political systems and in regard to the directing role of the state in marshalling science and technology as well as commercial activities for economic development.
China attains its renewed greatness in a historic epoch in which the Third World project—seeking true sovereignty in a proposed post-neocolonial world order—reaches advanced expression in theory and practice. And in which the Western powers—which never comprehended the real sources of their economic ascent—fall into decadence, attacking sovereign nations in the name of distorted national security doctrines. In the interested formulations of Western power elites, the attainment of peace and economic development by the peoples of the world is viewed as a security threat.
We stand at the dawn of a new epoch of human progress, in which economic development will not be based on conquest and superexploitation, but on cooperation and the common economic development of all, constituting the foundation for the common security of all and the attainment of lasting peace. China will play an increasingly important and leading role in the process of transition to a more just and sustainable world; “the “The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper” is yet one more sign of this likely world transition, presently in its initial stages.
The peoples of the Western nations are called by history to seek the taking of political power from the hands of Western elites, which have shown their moral and intellectual unpreparedness to rule in this time of world crisis and transition. The peoples must attend to the forging of pedagogical and political processes oriented to the taking of political power, so that their nations can play a constructive role in cooperating with China and the Third World in the building of a more just, peaceful, and prosperous world.
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