China Defense White Papers
How China’s Defense Establishment Views China’s Security Environment:
A Comparison between the 2019 PRC Defense White Paper and Earlier Defense White Papers
Michael Swaine, China Leadership Monitor, Winter 2019
Sunday, December 1, 2019
While reaffirming China’s longstanding “peace and development” line and offering a more positive take on many developments in Asia, the 2019 Defense White Paper highlights many negative features of the global security environment. This suggests an unresolved internal contradiction in China’s security views and policies. Such an apparent contradiction is perhaps resolved by the Defense White Paper’s description of strategic competition as driven largely by the U.S., not by China, and out of step with deeper global trends. Indeed, the PLA under Xi Jinping is depicted as working with other countries to realize Xi’s “shared community for mankind” as it strengthens its deterrence capabilities. Yet this propaganda-laden take reinforces the suspicions of many regarding China’s “real” goals. Beijing must inject a much more pragmatic, hard-power perspective into its public security stance and engage Washington on that basis in order to realize a meaningful level of stability based on mutual accommodation.
https://www.prcleader.org/michael-swaine
How China’s Defense Establishment Views China’s Security Environment:
A Comparison between the 2019 PRC Defense White Paper and Earlier Defense White Papers
Michael Swaine, China Leadership Monitor, Winter 2019
Sunday, December 1, 2019
While reaffirming China’s longstanding “peace and development” line and offering a more positive take on many developments in Asia, the 2019 Defense White Paper highlights many negative features of the global security environment. This suggests an unresolved internal contradiction in China’s security views and policies. Such an apparent contradiction is perhaps resolved by the Defense White Paper’s description of strategic competition as driven largely by the U.S., not by China, and out of step with deeper global trends. Indeed, the PLA under Xi Jinping is depicted as working with other countries to realize Xi’s “shared community for mankind” as it strengthens its deterrence capabilities. Yet this propaganda-laden take reinforces the suspicions of many regarding China’s “real” goals. Beijing must inject a much more pragmatic, hard-power perspective into its public security stance and engage Washington on that basis in order to realize a meaningful level of stability based on mutual accommodation.
https://www.prcleader.org/michael-swaine
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