According to Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese Foreign Ministry held a ‘Blue Hall’ forum and published a document (February 21, 2023) entitled, “Global Security Proposal (GSP) - Concept Document”. The document calls for great nations to promote political dialogue to resolve international and geopolitical hot spots through peaceful negotiation. The proposal is a timely one for the world to deal with the Russia-Ukraine war passing its anniversary with no peace in sight. This document not only outlined its concept and principles but also proposed what platforms that could be promoted and utilized to resolve global and local security issues. This document named upto fifteen global security concerns that need our attention. This author feels that this document deserves to be thoroughly studied and followed in dealing with our global security issues. In addition, in comparing the peace conference held in Copenhagen in June, 2022 and the Jeddah peace conference hosted by Saudi Arabia (August 5-6, 2023), one is hopeful that the Jeddah conference is one step in the right direction towards resolving the Russia-Ukraine war.
China’s Global Security Proposal is not a lengthy document consisting of only four chapters. The first chapter gives a background statement which can be summarized as follows: Security issue relates to the welfare of citizens of every nation. It is a noble endeavor concerning world peace, global development, and the future of the entire mankind. Presently, the world is experiencing worldly and historical transformation, enduring unprecedented challenges and danger. Local conflicts and geopolitical confrontations occur frequently, COVID pandemic, unilateralism, and protectionism surge causing traditional and untraditional security threats to rise. The world once again is standing at a crossroads. This background statement simply described that our global security issue is complex and of concern to citizens of every nation. President XiJinping of China raises the ‘global security proposal’ for the purpose of dealing with the challenges of international relations with the spirit of unity and facing the complex security issue with collaborative win-win ideals. The primary purpose of this proposal is to remove the root of the global security challenge, improve the management of global security, and promote the international cooperation by all societies to realize sustainable peace and development.
Chapter Two of the document contains its Core Ideas and Principles:
1.Establish mutual, consolidated, cooperative and sustainable security concepts.
2.Respect every nation’s sovereignty and rights, equality, and noninterference in other nation’s domestic issues.
3.Follow UN Charter and principles. Cold War mentality, unilateralism, hegemony behavior and alliance confrontation are all in conflict with the UN principles.
4.Respect every nation’s security concerns. All humankind is one body. Security is a common concern. One country’s security concern cannot harm another nation’s interest.
5.Insist using dialogue and peaceful means to resolve security conflicts. War and sanctions are not solutions to security issues.
6.Consider traditional and untraditional security issues collectively.
Today security issues are more complex and interconnected and far reaching.
Chapter three of the global security proposal points out that peace and stability are key conditions for each nation to develop. China will work with every nation and international organization to promote multilateral and mutual security under a set of directives such as using UN peace force to prevent conflicts, promoting peaceful interactions between great nations to maintain peaceful relations, avoiding nuclear war, following UN resolutions and international security guidelines to promote international cooperation and promoting political dialogue and peaceful negotiation to resolve global and local security issues. Fifteen security issues ranging from geopolitical (SE Asia, Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Pacific Islands), Ocean security, terrorism, information security, biological security, AI, Space, Healthcare, Food, Crime, and Climate Change are listed. The final chapter proposes to utilize existing cooperative platforms and any new initiatives to resolve security issues. The current Existing UN platform and many other platforms including SCO, BRICS, ASIA Trust (China + middle Asia), East Asia, as well as other fora such as China-Africa, China-Middle East, Beijing Xian Shang, Global Public Safety Forum (Lian Yun Port) and other international conferences.
Although the proposal is a general one, it is timely directed to the Russian-Ukraine war. The Jeddah conference organized by Saudi Arabia follows the spirit and principles of the GSP. It is commendable that Saudi Arabia has taken such an initiative and successfully gathered 42 nations to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war. Two significant points should be highlighted as accomplishments of the Jeddah conference. First both the U.S. and China have attended the meeting setting a good step for mediating peace between Russia and Ukraine. Second, the conference reached a consensus highlighting one of the principles of GSP - every nation’s sovereignty should be respected. This point would be a very difficult dispute to resolve between Russia and Ukraine. The consensus reached in Jeddah may have an influence in deterring any future territory aggression in any inter-national conflict, since the forty two nations’ endorsement of such a statement is a significant public opinion. In addition, any mediator for the Russian-Ukraine war may be able to use the Jeddah consensus to argue for an immediate ceasefire and start a peaceful negotiation, since in any conflict, ceasefire is better than war, negotiation is better than continuous fighting.
We do think that the GSP will be used fruitfully to resolve the Russian-Ukraine conflict and other global and local security issues. One salient point to be emphasized is that open dialogue and peaceful negotiation are solutions to any security concern. Therefore, a piece of wise advice to Taiwan in resolving the Taiwan Straiit conflict is that keeping an open dialogue and peaceful negotiation is a better strategy than clamming up and preparing for war, especially an unwinnable war.
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