Table of Contents
Since the end of the Cold War, China’s thinking about national security has changed greatly. During the Cold War, China viewed its national security mainly in terms of its struggles against the hegemony of one of the two superpowers or even against that of both superpowers and their followers. At present, China has been attaching most importance to the trend of globalisation, which has had positive and negative impacts on the country’s national security. On the positive side, China’s involvement in economic globalisation has increased its national strength and the range of interests it shares with other countries. On the negative side, China has faced a growing number of non-traditional threats, such as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), global warming, environmental pollution, transnational crime, drug trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and so on. So, although military security is still very important for China, it is increasingly concerned about non-traditional security issues, such as energy, food and environmental security, financial security, information security, and so on. In order to resolve these issues, China and other countries have to cooperate more with each other.
During recent years, therefore, China has accepted some new concepts of security featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and coordination.
In December 2004, China formally put forward its national security strategy, which should be subordinated to and should serve its National Development Strategy (NDS). Since the early 1980s, China has been focusing its efforts on internal economic development in order to improve the living standard and educational levels of its people. China will continue to move forward in this way for some time. The long-term purpose of the NDS is to make China a mid-level developed country, which will be strong, democratic and civilised, by 2050 (‘The report of Jiang Zemin at the 15th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party’, People’s Daily, Beijing, 12 September 1997). To achieve this objective, China will continue to pursue its policy of reform and opening up, and it needs a peaceful international environment in the long term, particularly with respect to its immediate geographic surroundings. This means that China does not want to do anything to seriously disturb the current international economic and political mechanisms, except when its national interests are threatened. Even if China can achieve its planned objective, because of its large population and the fact that its economic development is very unbalanced, it will continue to focus its attention on internal issues. At the same time, the more prosperous China becomes, the more cooperative it will be with other countries, because, in such circumstances, China will be influenced more easily by the outside world.
China has been pursuing its independent foreign policy of peace since the mid 1980s. The objective of China’s foreign policy is to maintain a peaceful international environment, which will be beneficial for China’s long-term economic and social development. There are four outstanding characteristics in China’s current foreign policy: peace, independence, mutual respect and cooperation. First, China’s foreign policy is formulated from the viewpoint of whether it is beneficial to international and regional peace and stability, rather than from the viewpoint of achieving military superiority. Second, with regard to independence, China formulates its foreign policy according to its national interests and the common interests of the peoples of all the countries in the world. Mutual respect indicates that China would like to put its relations with other countries on a base of mutual respect, and would like to see international political, security and non-proliferation agreements based on mutual respect between the member parties. Cooperation indicates that China would like to continue its cooperation based on its ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’ with all the countries in the world, including the United States, and would like to realise a concert between the major powers.