Xiangshan Forum looks to find the missing handshakes

The 13th Beijing Xiangshan Forum opens in Beijing today under the theme "Build Consensus on Stability, Advance Security Governance Together". As the forum marks its 20th anniversary, its search for common ground comes at a time of deepening security tensions.

Last autumn, I had the opportunity to attend the Beijing Xiangshan Forum. It simply did not look like a conventional security forum.

At the Munich Security Conference, the coffee break can become political theater in its own right. Delegates scan the room, calculating who they can be seen with and who should be avoided.

Journalists sometimes track how long officials from one major power speak to representatives of particular countries, treating those conversations as clues to an emerging alliance structure.

That "missing handshake" has become almost a ritual. The conference itself is undoubtedly one of the best places to observe Europe's security anxieties.

At Xiangshan, it was completely different.

During one break, a defense official from a small Southeast Asian country stood in a corridor for some 20 minutes talking with an old regional rival with whom he had little political common ground. No aide interrupted them. No reporter rushed over for a photograph. They were not even trying to lower their voices.

Later I turned to the official and asked him, "Did you reach an agreement?"

He smiled. "No. But now I understand why his side feels so nervous."

That answer stayed with me. In much of the Western security establishment, the value of a forum is often measured by consensus, communiques or displays of unity.

But when the stock of trust among major powers is running dangerously low, perhaps the most important function of a security forum is not to produce agreement. It is to prevent miscalculation.

This points to a deeper distinction. First, Munich tends to ask where the threat is coming from. Xiangshan is more interested in asking why a threat is being perceived.

Recent Western security debates — from a "post-Western" world to "de-risking" — repeatedly circle one question: Where is the danger? The anxiety is real. Europe faces genuine security dilemmas. But when identifying threats becomes synonymous with identifying enemies, security forums risk turning into stages for drawing ideological and strategic boundaries.

Xiangshan, by contrast, tends to focus on crisis management, de-escalation and how rules can be built together. It does not deny conflict; it simply refuses to reduce conflict to a morality play of heroes and villains.

Second, Munich often operates through the microphone. Xiangshan mostly works through "the corridor".

At many Western forums, official remarks are frequently crafted as media ammunition. Every sentence must take into account domestic voters, allies and headlines.

At Xiangshan, some of the most useful conversations happen away from the podium — in corridors, restaurants and coffee breaks. When people are not being pushed to declare which side they are on, they are more willing to say what they would never say into a microphone.

Third, there is a difference between drawing lines around values and lowering the ideological temperature.

Western security discussions increasingly treat shared political values as a kind of passport. Xiangshan brings together countries with different political systems, including Western allies and countries that the West often excludes from its strategic conversations.

The forum does not require everyone to share the same worldview. Its more modest premise is that countries should first be willing to sit at the same table, discuss rules and then confront their disagreements.

So why do these differences exist?

It is tempting to attribute them simply to China's role as host. But that misses the deeper point. The Xiangshan Forum reflects an older Chinese understanding of security and order.

The Tao Te Ching famously likens the highest form of virtue to water, which benefits all things without contending and flows to places others avoid. This is not an argument for weakness, but a different understanding of power itself.

A security mentality shaped by rivalry tends to assume that safety comes from overpowering an adversary. Traditional Chinese thought offers another possibility: security can come from accommodating differences and dissolving confrontation.

That helps explain why Xiangshan can put countries with different political systems around the same table. Their interests may diverge, their governments may differ and their positions may clash. Yet they can begin with one common premise: war is a catastrophe for everyone, so the first strategic task is to find ways to prevent it.

The highest form of strategy is not necessarily winning a war. It is making sure the war never begins.

That is also why security, in this tradition, extends beyond military affairs. Climate change, food security, public health and artificial intelligence governance belong in the same conversation because, from the perspective of tianxia — "all under heaven" — threats that cross borders cannot be neatly contained within them.

Of course, Xiangshan is no magic cure. A forum cannot erase structural rivalry among major powers overnight, nor can it make adversaries suddenly become friends.

But it can demonstrate something increasingly rare in an age of blocs, decoupling and talk of a new Cold War: the possibility of simply carrying on a conversation.

So, what is the Beijing Xiangshan Forum looking for while Western security forums search for enemies?

Perhaps it is looking for the courage to see an adversary as a human being. For a space where disagreement does not have to end the conversation. And for the ancient Chinese idea that the highest achievement in diplomacy is to prevent war from being fought at all.

In a world drowning in strategic noise, what we may need is not more missing handshakes, but more places where everyone — even rivals — is still able to extend a hand.

That is what Xiangshan is looking for.

The author is a Chinese current affairs and culture blogger who operates the social media account "Zhongnan Jianke", and has been conferred the title of "Highland" cultural ambassador by the National University of Defense Technology.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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