Wednesday, October 5, 2022

China's Global Security Initiative

 Foreign Affairs published on 3 October 2022 an article titled "Xi Jinping's Quest for Order: Security at Home, Influence Abroad" by Sheena Chestnut Greitens, University of Texas at Austin.  

In April 2022, President Xi Jinping announced at the Boao Forum for Asia the Global Security Initiative (GSI), which he framed as "promoting the common security of the world."  The GSI marks a significant shift in Chinese foreign policy and directly challenges the role of U.S. alliances in global security and seeks to revise global security governance to make it more compatible with the security interests of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

While the focus of the GSI is on internal Chinese security, it has a strong foreign policy component that will guide China's diplomacy based on its comprehensive national security concept.  The author points out that Xi has always seen external security threats largely through the prism of how they could undermine CPC rule at home.  The GSI is likely to underscore international outreach by Chinese police and domestic security officials.  Offers of police and domestic security assistance seem designed to make China the security partner of choice for countries that might not want such assistance to come with the human rights conditions or democratic accountability mechanisms that Western nations often demand.