INTRODUCTION

The past decade or so has witnessed a dramatic change of China's security perceptions, which is rooted in the sea change of the international system and China's opening up. While the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War provided a peaceful international environment for its economic development, China found that its strategic importance to the United States decreased dramatically. China's opening up and economic reforms since 1978 have resulted in its economic take-off and integration with the world economy. Meanwhile, the Chinese have been exposed to Western values which inevitably have had a strong impact on their perceptions of the world and China's political future.

This chapter will first discuss the evolution of China's understanding of its security requirements, followed by a reassessment of China's security environment. The chapter will then look at China's grand strategy and policies concerning its national security, and conclude with three dilemmas that China must manage.

DEFINITION AND SCOPE

Not surprisingly, China defined its national security in excessively narrow military terms in the Cold War years. After all, China was under constant threat from the United States and then the Soviet Union. Beijing's ideology-oriented worldview determined that it would always have a strong sense of military insecurity.

In the post-Cold War world, as noted by Chris Brown, “As concern over military security becomes less pressing, so a wider conception of security has come to the fore.” In the West, more attention is given to non-military security threat, such as depletion of the ozone layer, mass unemployment, large-scale drug trafficking and the arrival of large numbers of refugees. The focus of “security” is contested. Should it be traditional national and international security or individual security such as denial of human rights and poverty, societal security like regional integration and ethnic conflicts, or global security like a breakdown of the global monetary system and global warming?

The security debate in the West has influenced the Chinese understanding of national security. Chinese analysts accept that security now means “comprehensive security” (zonghe anquan). It no longer equals to national defence and diplomacy and is no longer limited to the defence of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. In addition to traditional military security, national security now includes, among other things, economic security, political security, societal security, environmental security, human security, and technological security.