Over three days in Beijing this week, 1,800 military officers, diplomats and academics from 100 countries discussed everything from the latest battlefield technology to the legacy of the second world war.
But this year’s Xiangshan Forum, China’s annual security conference, was held in the shadow of two events: Donald Trump’s return to the White House and this month’s massive display of military power at a parade in Tiananmen Square.
[ In pictures: China unveils new weapons in massive military paradeOpens in new window ]
China’s defence minister, Dong Jun, told the forum that the rest of the world had nothing to fear from a more powerful People’s Liberation Army (PLA). He said that China’s military strategy was founded on the principle of peaceful development and security partnerships based on equality, co-operation and mutual benefit.
“The stronger the PLA becomes, the stronger the power to constrain war will grow, and the more assured world peace and development will be,” he said.
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The parade on September 3rd, which marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the second World War, showcased China’s most advanced fighter jets, hypersonic missiles and AI-powered drones. New air-launched and land-based, intercontinental ballistic missiles joined a submarine-launched ballistic missile to demonstrate for the first time that China has joined the United States and Russia in having a nuclear triad.
The military parade came two days after Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi appeared together at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Tianjin. The two events were seen as emblematic of a reordering of the global order that has been accelerated by Trump’s actions over the past eight months.
Choi Shing Kwok, director and head of the ASEAN studies centre at ISEAS-Tusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told the forum that some of Trump’s foreign policy moves were expected. But while southeast Asian states were not surprised by his withdrawal from international treaties, the severity of the tariffs came as a shock and are threatening the development model of the entire region.
“What they have done is basically to try to preserve economic links against the destruction and the turmoil that is threatened by engaging in negotiations. And in the process, they have been willing to give short-term concessions through reducing their own tariff rates and also purchasing US goods. But this is really short term,” he said.
“The US is going to be disrupted from a system of trade. And countries will try to look for other partners, over time, for further integration with. This includes both internally in ASEAN as well as with other regions such as Europe, the GCC [Gulf Co-operation Council] and the Brics.”
Chinese officials used the Xiangshan Forum to promote Xi’s Global Governance Initiative (GGI), which Beijing characterises as a proposal to strengthen the United Nations-centred international system and to reform it. The initiative has won praise from parts of the Global South but western critics argue that the new order China is proposing would be thinly institutionalised, mostly non-binding and too vague to be effective.
Chinese experts at the forum tended to downplay both the rise of China and the decline of the US, which most agreed was both relative and slow.
Da Wei, a professor of social sciences at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, said China was not in a position to supplant the US as the hegemonic power and that even if it did, it would have no interest in persuading the rest of the world to adopt its political system.
“The US had a really powerful moment at the end of the cold war when it was the only superpower. Basically, the US was a universal power, a kind of globalist country. I always think that the US looked at Earth as if from other space. I think the US believed that on Earth there should be only one set of values, one set of institutions. And this is good for you, you should accept it. If you don’t accept it, I will sanction you,” he said.
“This missionary tradition, I don’t think that’s a Chinese perspective ... I don’t think China wants the world to adopt socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
While relations between Beijing and Washington have worsened dramatically over the past decade, Da believes that neither side is necessarily to blame. He suggests the source of their discord lies in the end of the era of globalisation that formed the basis of their relationship in the previous decades.
“If you think that everything is the other party’s fault, and you look at the relationship between major powers from the perspective of bilateral relations, I think this relationship between major powers will get worse and worse. However, if we all admit that the times have changed, globalisation has disappeared, neoliberalism has ended, and such a relationship is difficult to sustain, we may consider the changes in our relationship in the new era,” he said.
During a panel discussion on “the political settlement of local conflicts” Oleksandr Chalyi, a former deputy foreign minister of Ukraine and adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, spoke of the lessons learned in the past few years. The first was that the longer the war went on, the less likely it is to be resolved by military means and it was now clear that only a political process could establish a sustainable end to hostilities.
“The war in Ukraine also has a regional European security and global dimension” he said.
“In other words, a sustainable political settlement of the war in Ukraine is only possible in a package with a political settlement of some crucial key issues of European and global security. This requires active participation in negotiation on ending the war in Ukraine, of the United States, the EU and China.”
Feng Zhongping, director general of the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Europe was in its worst position from a security perspective since the end of the cold war. In a hostile relationship with Russia, Europe could no longer feel confident that the US would fulfil its Nato treaty obligation to defend the continent if it is attacked.
He suggested that Europe should learn from the experience after the second World War when Germany and France overcame their enmity to establish the European Coal and Steel Community.
“Some European colleagues told me, ‘Okay, we can do that with Russia, but we must defeat Russia first, and have regime change in Russia. Then we could shake hands with Russia’. Come on,” he said.
“We need to have a sustainable peace, which means not just post-conflict, 26 European countries sending troops to Ukraine. That’s probably important to guarantee the security of Ukraine after the war. But I guess you also need to do something else, to think about how to live peaceably with the other side of the war, which means Moscow. I know it’s hard for Europeans to agree to this but I’m afraid they have no other choice.”
