China’s global security blueprint — implications for Western security agency
CHINA’S GLOBAL SECURITY BLUEPRINT — IMPLICATIONS FOR WESTERN SECURITY AGENCY
WRITTEN BY BERNARDO MARIANI
7 MAY 2024
Amid conflicts raging around the world, geopolitical competition, and a general crisis of the international order established in the aftermath of the Second World War, China is claiming a more significant role in global governance. As outlined in a recent PeaceRep report, China’s growing aspirations and more assertive international posture are part of a coherent strategy that has been in the making for twenty years.
China began to articulate a transformative vision of global governance under its former leader Hu Jintao, who in 2005 called for “a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity”. In 2013, under President Xi Jinping, the political slogan became “building a community with a shared future for mankind”. Since 2021, China’s global governance ‘activism’ has become more conspicuous with Beijing proposing specific initiatives to advance its vision of a “shared future” and its great power aspirations. At the Boao Forum in April 2022, Xi launched the Global Security Initiative (GSI), which sits alongside the 2021 Global Development Initiative and the 2023 Global Civilization Initiative. Together, these three initiatives represent China’s programme for reforming the international order, in line with its national interests and role as a global economic and military power.
China’s ambitions to reshape the global security architecture are driven by several factors. They include increased Sino-US rivalry, China’s threat perceptions, especially about its periphery, and security risks in conflict and post-conflict settings where China operates. To address growing security concerns, China appears to have found itself in need of a strategy that offers the ideological and rhetorical framework for its narrative that the West is responsible for the global turmoil, enabling China to promote the idea that it has the solutions to this crisis. Moreover, China sought a strategy to build new security relationships — especially with the Global South, to resist what Beijing perceives as anti-China coalitions — and to better protect the security and safety of Chinese assets and nationals in conflict-affected environments. The GSI encapsulates all of this into a brief but coherent blueprint, encompassing international and regional challenges, traditional and non-traditional security, and the development and peace nexus.
Implications for Western security agency
China’s global security blueprint challenges Western notions of an international order based on liberal and universal values. The GSI emphasises national sovereignty instead of interventionism, common and indivisible security rather than military alliances, and development and social order as preferable to democracy and human rights. Its top-down approach focuses on government-to-government relations, leaving little scope for any substantial engagement with civil society.
Mindful of the fragilities surfacing in the international order, and tapping into widespread discontent in the Global South, China has come forward with a vision to reshape the global security architecture. Its security blueprint differs, both in principles and practice, from Western notions of a rules-based international order.
The GSI fits into China’s plan to reform, not overthrow, the international order. Having benefitted from the international rules-based order for decades, it remains in China’s national interest to preserve international stability, and to influence and shape the present order with a type of multilateralism that, in the words of Chinese scholar Gu Bin, is “based on America’s but transcends it”. Western countries, as well as those that have territorial disputes with China, including India, Japan, and several ASEAN countries, are suspicious of China’s active role in global security affairs. However, China’s endeavours have found a more welcoming audience among countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The Chinese foreign ministry claims that over 100 countries and international and regional organisations support the GSI. These very diverse countries share the view that the global order is not working in their favour. They aspire to a more equitable and inclusive international system and disagree with the perceived double standards of Western policies and American global primacy.
The handling of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza by the US and its allies has increased the gulf between the Global North and the Global South, the West and the East. There is a strong perception amongst countries of the Global South — with growing self-reckoning in the West too — of an international order “à la carte”, where international law is applied selectively and the West repeatedly violates its own rules. More than any active steps taken by China to challenge America’s global leadership, this perception is eroding the prestige, as well as the political and moral authority, of the West. Particularly, the war in Gaza’s horrific humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza has exposed the West’s professed deference to global norms to accusations of hypocrisy. When the legally binding orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are ignored, UN collective security is paralysed, the US is isolated in its ironclad support for Israel, and weapons from the US and its allies continue to flow to Israel in violation of international law, it is hard to believe that the US-led global order will endure throughout the next decades. This erosion of the global order is a trend that precedes the wars in Gaza and Ukraine; what is different now is that emerging powers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East are becoming increasingly vocal in their frustration with the West and more confident about their vision and role as agents of change.
Carrying the mantle of change
What should Western countries do amid shifts in global power balances and the inevitable evolution towards a multipolar world order? How best to preserve Western security agency and global influence? How to pursue international and regional security cooperation with China? Three policy priorities stand out.
First, Western policy actors should undertake a radical rethinking of their actions and what undermines the rules-based world order. This is not to say that China does not violate international rules and values or use claims of Western hypocrisy to advance self-serving political agendas. Not to mention that it is an attempt to justify Russia’s disregard of international law and its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. It is rather to emphasise that the primary responsibility for addressing the crisis of a crumbling rules-based order lies with the countries that created this order in the first place and are not living up to their responsibilities. On the one hand, Western countries should expend more diplomatic and political capital to demonstrate the benefits of their approaches as global security providers. On the other hand, they should ensure that their actions consistently follow and reinforce, rather than undermine, the rules-based order they champion. For the US and its allies, this would involve strengthening their own standings as sources of peace and stability and leveraging their influence to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts and disputes around the world. Key conflicts to focus on would include the nearly eighty-year-old Israel-Palestine conflict, the war in Ukraine, and the “forgotten wars” still raging, like the brutal conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar.
Second, the appeal of China’s proposals in the Global South should galvanise Western countries to invest more in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. These are traditionally part of the liberal peacebuilding approach but often lack adequate political, diplomatic, and financial resources. Developments in conflict prevention and peacebuilding should occur alongside innovative solutions to increase the effectiveness of development cooperation. Addressing the worsening of poverty and inequality, and the challenges of climate change, while investing in the localisation and decolonisation of aid and global public goods, should all be priorities. After decades of impasse, Western countries should also work towards tangible progress in overhauling key structures of the global system, including UN Security Council reforms, and creating a more equitable representation within multilateral institutions. Finally, as Global South countries will not renounce their non-aligned policies and will continue to have dealings with the US and its allies, as well as with Russia and China, Western countries should develop partnerships based on deal-making, rather than exclusive relationships. That means strengthening exchanges and cooperation in areas where there is substantial common ground and accepting that there are areas where cooperation is not feasible due to different political and economic interests, as well as governance, moral principles, and cultures.
Finally, the China threat narrative, which all too often dominates the political discourse in Western capitals, undermines efforts to seek out much-needed “positive-sum games” with China. These are possible, however, if outreach to China is consistent, pragmatic, and flexible enough to distinguish between the three areas of engagement. The first is cooperative efforts with China in handling prominent security problems in specific regional contexts where there is a confluence of interests. Second, efforts in addressing competing claims and strategic interests (e.g., maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea, nuclear non-proliferation and strategic arms control, dealing with North Korea, the regulation of artificial intelligence, and preventing an arms race in outer space and cyberspace). Third, engagement in areas related to different political traditions, value systems and cultures, including civil and political rights, democracy, and fundamental freedoms. Despite deeply rooted different approaches between China and the West that will not substantively change in the foreseeable future, these should remain a critical area of engagement with China because they reflect the “West’s moral identity” and Western security and stability revolve around them. However, engagement in the first and second tiers is more likely to result in potential areas of cooperation with China, and should be insulated from divergences on the values agenda of the third tier.
The GSI and the test of time
In a changing world, with new centres of power emerging and mounting geopolitical frictions, the framing of global security is evolving. Mindful of the fragilities surfacing in the international order, and tapping into widespread discontent in the Global South, China has come forward with a vision to reshape the global security architecture. Its security blueprint differs, both in principles and practice, from Western notions of a rules-based international order. For this, it is steadily garnering international support, specifically from countries in the Global South, because it fits their worldviews and aspirations for a more equitable, inclusive, and multipolar international system. Beyond the negative impacts of ill-conceived wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have further polarised the international community, further widening the disconnect between Global North and Global South countries. These conflicts also test China’s diplomatic abilities, policy coherence and the extent of its interventions.
It is far too early to judge the GSI and the role and impact of Chinese global security agency. The success, or failure, of the GSI will depend on how China upholds its commitments to a multipolar rules-based order that can address the key challenges of our time, the capacity and political will of local and global partners to rebalance ties with China, the state of Sino-US relations, and how China will leverage its political and economic influence to promote peace and prosperity in the decades ahead. Beyond discursive posturing and battles of narratives, China will have to prove its worth.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Bernardo Mariani is a conflict prevention and peacebuilding consultant at the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep). Led by the University of Edinburgh Law School, PeaceRep is a consortium of research institutions, non-governmental organisations, and local research teams dedicated to reimagining peace and transition processes amid changing conflict landscapes.
Since 2005, Bernardo Mariani has managed and implemented research and policy dialogue projects on the implications of China’s growing role in global security affairs. Image credit: Christophe Licoppe/European Union, 2024 (cropped).