China’s Global Security Initiative

On April 21, China’s President Xi Jinping proposed a new Global Security Initiative (GSI) during a keynote speech at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference. Like Xi’s other big ideas, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative, GSI is heavy on principles and light on concrete details.   Described as “another global public good that contributes Chinese solutions and wisdom to addressing the world’s security challenges” by China’s state media, the GSI rests on six pillars. Some of them, like respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity, are long-standing features of Chinese foreign policy. However, the GSI also has new components, including upholding “indivisible security.” To unpack the Global Security Initiative and its components, Bonnie Glaser is joined by Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme and a China Studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution in India. He is also a non-resident senior associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. Kewalramani publishes “Tracking People’s Daily,” a newsletter that offers a breakdown of the weekday editions of the People’s Daily.

Om Podcasten

China’s rise has captivated and vexed the international community. From defense, technology, and the environment, to trade, academia, and human rights, much of what Beijing does now reverberates across the map. China Global is a new podcast from the German Marshall Fund that decodes Beijing’s global ambitions as they unfold. Every other week, host Bonnie Glaser will be joined by a different international expert for an illuminating discussion on a different aspect of China’s foreign policy, the worldview that drives its actions, the tactics it’s using to achieve its goals—and what that means for the rest of the world.