By Zachary Keck
Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party is purposely conflating external and domestic security threats.
The Communist Party of China, particularly under Xi Jinping, has increasingly been blurring the lines between domestic and foreign security threats. This seems to be a deliberate undertaking by the highest levels of leadership to serve its most important objectives. However, it also may be a reflection of how CPC leaders perceive the challenges they face, and the capabilities they have to address them.
The CPC’s efforts to blur the lines between domestic and foreign security threats is not entirely new. As Zheng Wang noted yesterday on China Power, from the earliest days of the PRC Mao viewed intellectuals’ attraction to Western ideas as a serious threat to the CPC’s power.
What is more novel is that under Xi Jinping the CPC is re-organizing the Party and government to more seamlessly integrate decision-making (and perhaps implementation) on domestic and foreign security threats.
The clearest manifestation of this was the State Security Committee that was first announced following the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress last November. Initially most observers interpreted this new body as analogous to the National Security Councils in the United States and more recently Japan. Some of us were more skeptical. As I wrote at the time: “Much of the talk outside of China has been about how it [the state security committee] may affect China’s foreign and military policy. Based on what’s been said about it in the communiqué and in state media, it seems to me that this body will be at least primarily tasked with upholding domestic stability.” As more information emerged about the state security committee, it was generally accepted that it would indeed have a domestic component that was at least as important as the foreign one, if not more so.
Read the full story at The Diplomat