Communist Leadership Approves Security Goals for China By CHRIS BUCKLEY NY Times JANUARY 23, 2015 HONG KONG — China’s Communist Party leadership approved a blueprint on Friday setting out national security priorities and warning that the country faced daunting domestic and external dangers. It was ratified by the Politburo, a council of 25 senior officials, and signaled President Xi Jinping’s latest step to put security at the heart of his agenda. The official announcement of the decision from Xinhua, the state news agency, did not disclose the precise contents of the new document, but it emphasized that China’s leaders saw themselves entering perilous times. “Currently, international developments are turbulent and volatile, and our country is undergoing profound economic and social changes,” said the Xinhua report, citing the Politburo decision. “Social conflicts are frequent and overlapping, and security risks and challenges, both foreseeable and hard to anticipate, are unprecedented.” Warnings of looming danger have long been part of Chinese leaders’ political language. But more than his predecessors, Mr. Xi has cast himself as an ardently patriotic defender of unitary national interests, taking a tough stance against neighbors in border disputes and against ethnic discontent in the Xinjiang region and Tibet. Mr. Xi’s catchphrase is “the China Dream,” and the strategy outline expands on his previous efforts to build up a national security apparatus. He has also pursued an intense campaign to extinguish political dissent, which is seen as menacing to one-party rule, and said that control of the Internet is a mainstay of domestic order. In November 2013, a party meeting approved establishing a National Security Commission, broadly similar to the United States’ National Security Council, after over a decade of discussion of the idea. When the commission met for the first time last April, Mr. Xi indicated that the commission would have the power to reach into many aspects of domestic and foreign policy. “There must be constant strengthening of a sense of peril,” said the latest announcement from the Politburo. But China’s military and security forces have been tarnished by a succession of lurid corruption scandals, prompting doubts about their readiness. Military investigators said in October that a retired People’s Liberation Army commander, Xu Caihou, had confessed to taking huge bribes. In December, Zhou Yongkang, once the formidable head of domestic security, was arrested after investigators found he had taken bribes, helped family members and cronies steal state assets, and leaked official secrets. This month, a vice minister of the Ministry of State Security also came under investigation for corruption. The latest party leaders’ announcement demanded absolute loyalty from the security services. “There must be unwavering adherence to the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute leadership of national security work,” said Xinhua, citing the Politburo decision. “Strive to create high-quality, professional national security forces.”
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 20:49:31 +0000
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