China’s Global Security Initiative Looks Awfully Familiar

In April 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping dropped a new catchphrase into his speech at the Boao Forum for Asia: the “Global Security Initiative.” Decrying elements of the existing security order – “Cold War mentality,” “hegemonism and power politics,” and “bloc confrontation” – as threats to world peace, Xi proposed the GSI as China’s alternative “to promote security for all in the world.”

The GSI made headlines and attracted a great deal of attention as China’s proposed alternative to the current global security order (largely centered on the U.S. and Russian networks of military alliances). But it’s not actually new, except for the name itself. The concepts behind the GSI first appeared in 2014, at a summit of the little-discussed Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).

China hosted the 4th CICA Summit in Shanghai in 2014. In the minds of Chinese leaders, CICA was conceived of as the bookend to China’s hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit the same year: One outlined China’s security vision for the region, the other China’s economic vision. In his keynote speech, Xi spoke of a “new Asian security concept for new progress in security cooperation.” In defining that concept, Xi said that “China will work along with other parties to advocate [a] common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security concept in Asia, establish a new regional security cooperation architecture, and jointly build a road for security of Asia that is shared by and win-win to all.”

That has now been rebranded as the GSI, which Xi similarly described as “the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.” But while the GSI only merited a brief paragraph in Xi’s address at the Boao Forum, his 2014 speech at CICA contained more details about the security vision, including more detailed definitions of the four key words: common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable. Somewhat ironically, then, we can get a clearer picture of the “new” GSI by going back to an eight-year-old speech.

In 2014, Xi spoke at length about “common security,” which he defined as “respecting and ensuring the security of each and every country.” Xi elaborated: “Security must be universal, equal and inclusive. We cannot just have the security of one or some countries while leaving the rest insecure, still less should one seek the so-called absolute security of itself at the expense of the security of others.”

If that sounds familiar, it should – Xi’s “common security” strongly parallels the more frequently used term “indivisible security,” which Russia has seized upon to justify its invasion of Ukraine. Xi did not mention “indivisible security” back in 2014. He did, however, include it in his 2022 remarks introducing the GSI, even though the Russian invasion earlier this year has cast “indivisible security” as a pro-Moscow catchphrase. Apparently being seen as too closely connected to Russia is no longer a concern for China’s leaders.

Regardless of the terminology used, the core point of the “common/indivisible security” concept is, at heart, overturning the U.S. alliance-based security network. “We cannot just have security for one or a few countries while leaving the rest insecure,” Xi said in 2014. “A military alliance which is targeted at a third party is not conducive to common regional security.”

Similarly, at the 2022 Boao Forum, Xi urged countries to “say no to group politics and bloc confrontation” and instead “build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the pursuit of one's own security at the cost of others' security.”

“Comprehensive security,” by contrast, gets less attention. In 2014, Xi said it “means upholding security in both traditional and non-traditional fields.” In 2022, the concept appeared only obliquely, in an afterthought mention of “maintaining security in both traditional and non-traditional domains… such as terrorism, climate change, cybersecurity and biosecurity.”

“Cooperative security,” according to Xi in 2014, “means promoting the security of both individual countries and the region as a whole through dialogue and cooperation.” In 2022, Xi updated that framing slightly to include a specific focus on “oppos[ing] the wanton use of unilateral sanctions.” The key point here is that conflicts must be handled through dialogue and not through any coercive action. (Of course, China exempts itself from this principle, viewing what others might call “coercion” or “sanctions” on its part as proportional responses to provocations.)

The final point, “sustainable security,” conflates security with economic development. “Sustainable security means that we need to focus on both development and security so that security would be durable,” Xi said in 2014. “We need to focus on development, actively improve people's lives and narrow down the wealth gap so as to cement the foundation of security.” China, in 2014 certainly and even today, has a much stronger track record in economic development than security provision, which explains the attempt to link the two: Xi was effectively claiming that China’s economy-boosting activities are, in fact, tantamount to ensuring security.

In 2022, the link between economic development and security provision is still there, but flipped on its head. At the Boao Forum, Xi said that “security is the precondition for development,” rather than emphasizing economic advancement as a necessary step toward security. This may be a very oblique warning to other countries that the old model of depending on China for economic growth and the United States for security will no longer work for Beijing – or it may simply be a reflection of the fact that China is taking a more cautious approach to investing in conflict-ridden areas.

Perhaps the most interesting divergence between the two speeches is that, in 2014, Xi was speaking to a specifically Asian audience, proposing a specifically Asian security framework. In doing so, he was pointedly exclusionary, saying that extra-regional powers (read: the United States) need not apply: “The people of Asia have the capability and wisdom to achieve peace and stability in the region through enhanced cooperation,” Xi declared.

The GSI, as its very name indicates, seeks to be global in scope, rather than limiting its focus to Asia alone. However, even in 2022, Xi still emphasized “Asian unity” and appealed to a uniquely Asian identity to promote China’s supposedly global security vision. And he introduced the concept, once again, in a forum “for Asia.”

Another difference is that Xi’s CICA speech is now eight years old, and we can easily evaluate the follow-up – or the lack thereof. Xi’s plan for turning CICA into a functional organization that would help implement China’s security vision never panned out.

Xi is essentially peddling the same wares in 2022 that he first rolled out in 2014, just under a different name. But, as in 2014, it’s unclear that there’s much appetite or enthusiasm for China’s security vision.

It’s also even less clear how China plans to implement this vision. At least in 2014, Xi had a mechanism in mind: CICA. That didn’t work in practice, but the GSI is even more vague in terms of how it will go about actually putting in place a security order. “Global Security Initiative” is a lofty name, but nearly all of China’s “global” initiatives – like the Belt and Road – have actually depended on a series of bilateral agreements with China. Beijing is a long way off from being able to convene a working international security forum.

Even if China starts at the bilateral level, getting buy-in will be a steep proposition. While China may decry security “blocs,” by pursuing the GSI it will be de facto creating a “China camp” within Asia’s security architecture, with all the blowback that will entail for potential members.

The case of China’s security agreement with Solomon Islands made crystal clear that any country signing on to the GSI in the future will be automatically seen as joining China’s own “bloc.” Solomon Islands tried mightily to emphasize that its partnership with China was meant to function in addition to its traditional security ties with Australia and the United States, rather than displacing them, but the message largely fell on deaf ears. Major regional players are likely to be hesitant to sign up to the GSI, lest it appear that they are, in fact, “taking sides” in the China-U.S. competition.

Most curiously, there were no additional details about the GSI in Defense Minister Wei Fenghe’s speech at the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue, nearly two months after Xi first introduced the concept. Wei referenced the GSI only once, before focusing his speech on specific security issues of concern to China.

That silence suggests that Beijing itself isn’t quite sure how to go about bringing its vision into reality. Given that the backbone of the GSI is eight years old at this point, that’s a troubling sign for its future.