The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) released its Global Security Initiative proposal on Feb. 21 when its top diplomat, Wang Yi, met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow. An expert said this is a strategy to disrupt the international order and the CCP is a threat to the free world far more serious than the former Soviet Union. Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Qin Gang claimed, “World security would not be possible without the security of China” at the Beijing Lanting Forum regarding the proposal.
The CCP said the proposal was Beijing’s effort in seeking a political solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In an ambiguous statement, the regime’s mouthpiece CCTV said “the core concepts and principles of the Global Security Initiative” will clarify “mechanisms” involved in global cooperation and offer “directions and platforms.”
Sun Kuo-hsiang, an expert in national security and international relations from Nanhua University in Taiwan, sees China’s proposal as a strategic competition for the “right to speak” against the United States. He said that the CCP is good at gaining attention with fancy but meaningless slogans, which undermine international security and order. Sun pointed out that the CCP wants to be the boss and run the world like its own enterprise. Instead of negotiations done in concert with countries and the U.N., he said, “the CCP wants to reinvent the wheel,” with the CCP at the center of a new world order.
On Wang’s trip to Munich, he said that Beijing continued to “stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue” regarding the Ukraine crisis, adding that China would be launching a Global Security Initiative Concept Paper with practical measures to address global security challenges. He said the concept had won support from more than 100 countries and organizations.
Sun said the CCP’s purpose is to replace the United States. The CCP plays the game according to the so-called international rules and tries to tailor events to its need. He said the CCP’s practice has been engaging in ‘gray strategies’ that are ambiguous, which is in fact disrupting the international order.
On his European tour, Wang visited France, Italy, Hungary, and Germany. The visit to Russia on Feb. 21 was his last stop. In the Kremlin, Putin stated that Russian-Chinese relations are “progressing and growing steadily … reaching new milestones.” Wang said that China-Russia relations have “withstood the pressure exerted by the international community and are developing sustainably.”
Sun said that while European countries are concerned with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, their failure to recognize the CCP’s gray strategy has allowed it to manipulate the crisis to divide the United States and the EU. French President Emmanuel Macron announced a plan on Feb. 25 to visit Beijing in April to convince Xi to mediate an end to the conflict. Sun said that the CCP’s intention has never been about peace between Russia and Ukraine. Chinese economist and blogger Cai Shenkun commented, “In a sense, it is the West that has been nurturing this war wolf [in the CCP]. If the West cannot completely decouple from the regime, the future is really worrying.”
Haizhong Ning and Luo Ya contributed to this report.