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A new Global Security Initiative put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping will look to counter the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy and the Quad — the India, U.S., Australia, Japan grouping — according to Chinese officials.
Mr. Xi last week first proposed what he called a Global Security Initiative, speaking at the Boao Forum in China, warning against “hegemonism, power politics and bloc confrontation”.
“China would like to propose a Global Security Initiative, that is, to stay committed to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security,” he said, which would “oppose unilateralism, and say no to group politics and bloc confrontation.”
Specifically, he said this would “oppose the wanton use of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction”, appearing to refer to Western sanctions.
Further fleshing out what this Global Security Initiative would entail, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi earlier this week penned an article in the official People’s Daily outlining key principles of the idea.
He said “some countries” were “eager to engage in exclusive ‘small circles’ and ‘small groups’”, terms Chinese officials have used previously to describe the Quad as well as the AUKUS (Australia-U.K.-U.S.) security pact.
In the article, Mr. Wang said China’s proposed security initiative would “oppose” what he called “the destruction of the international order under the banner of so-called ‘rules’ and the dragging of the world under the cloud of the ‘new cold war’”, and would “build an Asian security model of mutual respect, openness and integration”.
“We firmly oppose the use of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ strategy to divide the region and create a ‘new Cold War’, and the use of military alliances to put together an ‘Asian version of NATO’,” he said.
Mr. Wang had also taken aim at the Quad last month, suggesting during the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing that the grouping was equivalent to the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance involving the Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S. and U.K. and the AUKUS pact, as a key element in what he called U.S. plans to build an “Asian NATO”
The members of the Quad have rejected the notion that it is an Asian NATO or a military alliance, and pointed to its broad-based cooperation, including on vaccines and technology. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in February “there are interested parties who advance that kind of analogy”. “I would urge you not to slip into that lazy analogy of an Asian-NATO,” he said, pointing out India was not a treaty ally of the U.S.
