The core of China’s new security concept is common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security, focusing on inclusive and holistic global stability.
Common Security
Common Security is the foundation of China’s new security concept, which calls for shared and all-win security among all countries. This is a far cry from the traditional concept of security, which emphasises the pursuit of national interest and national security, often through unilateral security measures.
Common Security in Action
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has played an important role for China, perhaps the most significant manifestation of this. In this case, China has been advocating dialogues in regional security and intelligence and counter-terrorism actions so that this kind of area can cooperate. In order to safeguard her own security, and therefore not pecisely or indirectly undermine the stability of the region, China promised to continue supporting Afghanistan during the SCO summit in 2018 on the platform of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group.
Impact on Global Governance
Within global governance structures, the common security agenda China promotes plays a significant role. Speaking out against intervention in its own affairs and respect for the diverse political and social systems in existence, China takes the opposite stance to the one normally enacted by the West. Thus it is evident in China’s diplomatic relationships in Africa where it engages with countries in ways typical of Western aid and investment without the attached political conditions, or which are done so as epitome of mutual respect for sovereign equality and common security.
Challenges and Considerations
Although Multi-level Security is an appealing concept, it is difficult to achieve in practice because of differences in national interests and historical disputes. In addition, the way in which China’s intentions are perceived also plays a major role (some countries fear China’s commitment to common security is merely a facade that masks strategic nationalistic targets).
Comprehensive Security
This includes more than traditional military security: the term is considered to be an all-encompassing part of China’s Comprehensive Security concept, which extends to political, economic, societal, and environmental factors. This multisectoral approach recognizes that real security cannot be obtained through spending on military machinery alone, but its key to the security is peace achieved through comprehensive and balanced policies which must be interwoven with the root causes of insecurity.
Security of the Economy and the Environment
The BRI to illustrate China’s use of comprehensive security (peacemilitarism). The BRI In addition to its manifest economic objectives, the BRI endeavors to forge viable trade links that strengthen economic security of the signatory states. However, the infrastructure investments in Kazakhstan also stabilised a key region for China’s overland trade routes. In Kazakhstan, China has looked at investment in transportation networks and energy systems, which crucial to the economic and hence over all security of China and its counterpart Kazakhstan.
In the environmental realm this is evident in China’s pursuit of comprehensive security from green development, reflected in her national shift toward renewable energy. It declared in its 14th Five-Year Plan that it will ensure CO2 emissions peak by 2030 and then reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Over the years, environmental sustainability has come to align with national security as environmental degradation threatens national stability and may pose one of the most significant long-term threats to national as well as global security.
The Technology of Social Security
Although in practice it means Beijing spends big on preventing societal security, as it funnels this towards tech- and especially surveillance tech-investment. This is a privacy issue that would be outrageously controversial globally, but it falls in line with how China believes it can create security for itself. Take facial recognition technology used for crime prevention in China – like Shanghai in particular – as an example, where facial recognition is put into application to a comprehensive security system designed to keep public order.
Struggles with holistic security practice
While the comprehensive security is really great, it is not free of its challenges. This involves striking the right balance between ruthless economic development and eco-sensitive practices, walking the tightrope between societal security and individual freedoms. Meanwhile, how China’s global security policies are understood may also impact its global relationships as with opinions on the BRI being billed as debt-trap diplomacy or fears on surveillance.
Cooperative Security
The approach of Cooperative Security by China represents a new strategic move wherein China would develop partnerships and promote cooperation among the world on the security front. This dimension of Chinese security strategy highlights the necessity for coordination and dialogue in global security governance.
International Agreements
One major case in point of China’s will for mutually beneficial security is its on-going role in United Nations peacekeeping. Among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China is one of the largest contributors of peacekeeping forces. By 2020, China had dispatched more than 2,500 peacekeepers to missions in different parts of the world, thereby demonstrating its strong resolve in cooperating with the UN to uphold international peace and security.
In the cyberwhole, China has participated in various bilateral and multilateral discussions to improve the global cybersecurity practices. Take the annual China-U. The U.S. Cybersecurity Working Group is a forum for the two countries to work together to tackle cybercrime, insecurity of data and protection of critical infrastructure in the economic, high-tech, academic, military and other spheres. This is a response to the global nature of these threats, which no single nation-state can adequately address on its own.
Regional Stability Efforts
China regionally pursues cooperative security through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, (which includes Russia, India, and Pakistan). Main objective & work Areas: The main objectives of SCO are 1) to fight three evils of terrorism, separatism and extremism. Joint military exercise, such as the Peace Mission exercises, promote to the interoperability and common security of the regional community.
There are also elements of cooperative security in China’s behavior in the South China Sea, despite its territorial disputes there. The crux of China’s innovative proposals is the concept of joint development for natural resources, meaning that cooperation can both help defuse tensions and achieve common interests, despite potential disputes in certain areas.
Challenges and Criticisms
Although cooperative security is being further promoted by China, being practical, challenges or criticism related to implementation is that China is a small LDC. There is also an undertone of skepticism about China’s motives – especially in areas where it has extensive strategic interests. For instance, even as it has called for cooperative development in the South China Sea, China has made certain islands there available for military purposes, prompting fears from neighbors who view this as a violation of the sterile cooperative security principle.
Sustainable Security
In fact, the idea of Sustainable Security in the new security framework in China underlines the linkage of long-term environmental, economic and societal stability with security strategy. This recognizes that security only treating immediate threats ignores the need to ensure that communities and nations can stay resilient and sustainable in future challenges.
Strengthening Security through Environmental Sustainability
One of the most visible instances of this being done well is China making a sweeping turn towards alternative energy to address climate change (which Chinese military threat analysts have identified as the single greatest security threat to the globe, bar no none) as part of an overall pacification of their domestic security situation as well. China installed more than 720 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2020, making up 42 percent of the global total. The commitment to sustainable security, by managing the causes beneath environmental instability, can be seen in the efforts of the country to realize a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
Economic Rules for Long-term Stability
In economic terms, sustainable security is embodied by China loosening the reins on heavy industry and moving the needle towards consumption-led growth from decades of state-led growth. The movement is in line with the common aim to build an environmentally friendly and more sustainable economic model while seeking to reduce environmental deterioration in order to provide stable and long-term growth. In its 14th Five-Year Plan, China named high-tech sectors and clean-burning energy sources as a priority, with a goal of making its GDP carbon neutral in another decade through a 65%-plus decline in the carbon intensity of GDP from 2005.
Social and Human Dimensions of Sustainable Security
From a social mitigation standpoint, China has made substantial investments in public health and education, understanding that a healthy and educated populace is the most critical and long- term guarantor of stability and security. The Healthy China 2030 Plan is a good case to illustrate a plan to optimize national health policies and health services, as well as to prevent and control major diseases for the sustainable safety of a nation.
International Sustainability Cooperation
On an international level, China promotes sustainable security with its implementation of international agreements (e. g., the Paris Agreement) and appearances at international fora on topics from climate change to extinction of species. This methodological approach illustrates not only China’s potential to provide a concrete example of a global, cooperative solution to sustainability issues, and an example of a national interest strategy for achieving global security.