Chinese answer to security dilemma: China Daily editorial

Munich's 2026 security conference adopted "Under Destruction" as its theme, reflecting anxiety about a fraying international order and uncertain transatlantic relations. The Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, meanwhile, was dominated by concerns about strategic competition, alliances and regional defense commitments.

Much of modern Western security thinking was forged in a world of rival European powers, colonial frontiers, industrial warfare and limited economic interdependence. It treats international anarchy and power competition as enduring facts, with alliances among like-minded states the bulwark to protect privileges.

NATO remains the clearest expression of this. But collective protection for alliance members is not the same as security for everyone. A system designed for the strategic anxieties of the Cold War cannot automatically answer the needs of a world in which threats and interests cross almost every border.

Today's dangers do not respect cozy club membership. Climate change, pandemics, cyberattacks, supply-chain disruptions, terrorism and the risks associated with artificial intelligence are shared hazards. Economic globalization has made national prosperity dependent on distant markets, energy routes and production networks. A disruption in one region can quickly become inflation, unemployment or political instability in another.

The 13th Beijing Xiangshan Forum, as illustrated by its theme — "Build Consensus on Stability, Advance Security Governance Together" — is less downbeat and more constructive than the Munich and Singapore security gatherings. Its agenda places the inclusion of developing countries in global rule-making, as well as AI governance and the security of maritime corridors and of cyber and outer space, alongside conventional questions of strategic stability.

At the opening of the forum on Wednesday, China's Defense Minister Dong Jun noted that stability should be defended through true multilateralism, with the United Nations at the center and international law as the rule book. The lessons of two world wars and today's conflicts, he said, point to the importance of preventing crises before they erupt. He also urged vigilance against hegemonism, militarism and historical revisionism.

Yet the security policy of some developed countries often reaches first for the old instruments: alliances and exclusive partnerships, higher military spending and forward deployments. In this way the security dilemma becomes self-perpetuating. Measures presented as defensive by one side are interpreted as offensive by another, producing countermeasures that prompt further actions from the other side, leaving everyone less secure. The history of NATO's post-Cold War enlargement and the subsequent conflict in Ukraine illustrates how incompatible security narratives can become mutually reinforcing. In Asia, Japan's importing of similarly exclusive strategic logic risks turning a region of extraordinary economic interdependence into a theater of bloc rivalry.

China's Global Security Initiative offers a different framework. Its principles of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security place dialogue above confrontation, partnership above alliance and shared security above zero-sum games. It stresses sovereignty, the UN Charter, attention to the legitimate security concerns of all countries and the integration of traditional and nontraditional security. Development, in this conception, is not separate from security, but one of its foundations.

The appeal of this approach is particularly evident to the Global South, where economic development, political stability, food and energy security often outrank military threats. The wide support for the approach suggests a demand for security arrangements that are less exclusive and more responsive to countries outside established strategic clubs.

Hegemonism — whether justified in the language of intervention or an allegedly exclusive "rules-based order" — remains dangerous. So does the new militarism and historical revisionism of Japan's Sanae Takaichi government, which risks reviving anxieties about that country's aggression in the Asia-Pacific.

The questions are unavoidable. In an age of globalization, why persist with zero-sum security? If the UN system, forged in the crucible of two world wars, is treated as optional, has humanity forgotten the price of its past follies? And why allow AI, outer space and cyberspace to become new battlegrounds for old strategic habits? These domains should be arenas for cooperation, collective rule-making and common security, not the next frontiers of an arms race.

The future will not echo the voice broadcasting the loudest warnings, but will instead belong to whoever recognizes that true security never mistakes the world of yesterday for the world of today.