By Ankit Panda
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Americans should be quite flattered this week: one of the outcomes of China’s much-discussed Third Plenum was the formation of a security committee modeled on the National Security Council (NSC) of the United States. According to the New York Times, "experts said took inspiration from the National Security Council that serves American presidents.” The committee is codified towards the end of a rather lengthy communiqué issued by the Communist Party of China.
Bloomberg quotes a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, as saying that this new council "should make terrorists, extremists and separatists nervous.” He adds, "Anyone who would disrupt or sabotage China’s national security should be nervous.” It’s unclear if the second sentence is directed at China’s neighbors and possibly the United States.
In an interview with Bloomberg, M. Taylor Fravel, a China expert and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said that the idea of a Chinese NSC is not new: "There’s been talk of establishing an NSC-like body for coordinating national security policy for over a decade.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat