Xi's Global Campaign for Chinese Security

Abstract

Xi's Global Campaign for Chinese Security Carla P. Freeman (bio) Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, China's leader Xi Jinping has frequently invoked the Chinese idiom that in crisis, there is opportunity (CGTN 2020). In 2022, even as China continued its COVID state of emergency, Xi Jinping doubled down on promoting China as a source of answers to the world's security challenges. Making a case that the US-led international order lacks the capacity to address current international threats and is also a source of instability, Xi began a global campaign to assert that China had an alternative and better vision for managing global security. Beijing has yet to provide many details about what it has in mind for a new global security order. What can be inferred is that China perceives the current fraught international environment as a chance to win support for security norms that align more closely with its national capabilities and preferences. Beijing's principal vehicle in this undertaking is a "Global Security Initiative" (GSI), introduced by Xi at the Boao Forum in April 2022 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2022). The initiative is purposively bold: as then Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi elaborated soon after Xi's roll out of the concept, it promises nothing less than "a new approach to eliminating the root causes of international conflicts" (Wang 2022). A GSI concept paper published by China's Foreign Ministry in February 2023 repeats this phrase, adding that "China stands ready to work with all countries and peoples…to create a better future for mankind …" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023). It remains to be seen if the GSI concept will itself win China significant international followership as it takes form. Chinese media reports that 80 countries have already endorsed it (Global Times Editors 2023). Public commentary in non-aligned countries suggests, however, that there are concerns the GSI could be a new bloc in the making (Giri 2022). What is clear is that Chinese arguments that something needs to [End Page 313] be done to improve global security resonate with large swathes of the global public (Yiu 2022). Beijing has almost certainly launched the GSI with multiple policy outcomes in mind. At minimum, the GSI provides a framework for China to amplify its preferred narrative that the US-led international environment is deteriorating and strengthens perceptions that China is a willing provider of global security (Sun 2022). At the time it was launched, Beijing may have seen the GSI as an opportunity to buffer China from criticism on a number of fronts. First, that its own zero COVID policies had contributed to the global economic slowdown; at minimum, it has used narratives critical of Western handling of not just international security but also the pandemic to win support for the GSI in the developing world. Second, the GSI may also have been timed to counter rhetoric that Beijing sought to maximize its opportunities in the Ukraine crisis by maintaining an ambiguous position on Russia's invasion. In early 2023, Beijing associated the GSI with a number of high profile diplomatic initiatives, including a position paper enumerating principles for a political settlement of the Ukraine war and a key role in brokering a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Recent developments also offer evidence that the GSI could be operationalized as a channel for the export of Chinese technologies and techniques China uses to implement its domestic security goals (Freeman and Stephenson 2022b). As this suggests, the development of a new international security architecture with Chinese characteristics is about much more than just buttressing Chinese hard power or diplomatic influence: it is about enhancing a comprehensive vision of Chinese security that encompasses the entire state, domestic society, and, to an increasing degree, the international community as well. 2012–2021 Comprehensive National Security with Xi Jinping Characteristics Securing China has been a dominant theme of Xi Jinping's leadership since he succeeded Hu Jintao a decade ago. A number of institutional changes and new policies that followed the 18th Party Congress and the 2018 Two Sessions made clear that, under Xi's leadership, China would pursue a security strategy that...