Abstract

Beijing’s national security strategy is featured by the top priority of political security concerns at home given by the Communist Party’s leadership. China’s domestic political and social stability has been increasingly threatened by a combination of internal and external “hostile forces.” President Xi Jinping proclaimed in 2017 that “safeguarding national political security, especially security of the political power and system, should be put in the first place.” The 20th Communist Party Congress held in October 2022 further elevated the standing of national security. Faced with the aftermath of the COVID pandemic crisis that has not completely faded away, the slowing down of economic growth in 2020-2023, the aging and shrinking population, the insufficient social welfare system, among other things, Beijing will have to take more effective measures to curb possible disturbances around the country. Meanwhile, turbulence is hitting the world. The Western countries are increasingly unfriendly toward the PRC. In particular, the United States has been imposing technological sanctions against China aimed at preventing it from becoming a technological giant at par with America. The secessionist tendency in Taiwan is encouraged by US support and the worsening of PRC-US relations. Tensions will continue across the Taiwan Strait, with the prospect of a military showdown looming larger. Beijing’s national security strategy is being tested by all these challenges and there is no easy solution to any of them.

About the Speaker

Wang Jisi is Founding President of the Institute of the International and Strategic Studies (IISS) at Peking University. He served as president of the IISS from 2013 to 2022.

Wang Jisi is a Peking University Boya Chair Professor Emeritus, having taught at the University’s School of International Studies. He is honorary president of the Chinese Association for American Studies.

After working as a labourer in the Chinese countryside in 1968-78, Wang Jisi entered Peking University and obtained an MA degree there in 1983. He was a visiting fellow or visiting professor at Oxford University (1982-83), University of California at Berkeley (1984-85), University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1990-91), and Claremont McKenna College in California (2001). He was invited as a Global Scholar by Princeton University in 2011-15 and spent 9 months in total there with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Wang Jisi taught in Peking University’s Department of International Politics (1983-91), and then served as director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences until 2005. From 2005 to 2013, Wang Jisi was dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University. He was concurrently director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies of the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China from 2001 to 2009. He served as a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of China’s Foreign Ministry from 2008 to 2016.

Professor Wang’s scholarly interests cover U.S. foreign policy, China’s foreign relations, and Asian security. He has published numerous works in these fields.