Two weeks after a massive display of military power on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, China will host a major security forum starting on Wednesday with representatives from more than 100 countries. Hosted by China’s defence ministry, the Beijing Xiangshan Forum will offer foreign observers a rare opportunity to meet senior officers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and to evaluate how successfully China has modernised its military.
Reluctant to boost the Xiangshan Forum as a rival to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore as Asia’s leading security conference, most western countries are sending low-level representatives. But many non-western countries are sending more high-level delegations and neighbouring states including Malaysia and Singapore will be represented by their defence ministers.
This month’s military parade in Beijing, which saw Xi Jinping flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second World War, known in China as the World Anti-Fascist War.
Other sessions will look at the role of the United Nations, which also marks its 80th anniversary this year, and the role of China’s armed forces in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. Beijing is likely to use the forum to promote Xi’s “global governance initiative”, which he launched in Tianjin just before this month’s military parade.
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The initiative’s five principles – adherence to sovereign equality, abiding by the international rule of law, practising true multilateralism, advocating a people-centred approach and focusing on taking real action – appear on their face to be uncontroversial. And Beijing is presenting the initiative as an attempt to safeguard and strengthen the authority of the United Nations and its central role in global governance.
The initiative is a direct challenge, however, to the “rules-based international order” that Xi characterises as the hegemonic imposition of western rules on the rest of the world, including through the imposition of economic sanctions without UN authorisation. Beijing has been promoting the initiative in media campaigns in Africa in recent days, suggesting that it would give that continent a bigger say in the UN security council.
While China will use the Xiangshan Forum to present itself as a benign international actor committed to peace and co-operation, its actions in the South China Sea tell a different story. Beijing has been aggressively enforcing its disputed claims to more than 90 per cent of the maritime area, this month declaring the Scarborough Shoal, which is also claimed by the Philippines, a natural reserve and conducting navy trials of its most advanced aircraft carrier in disputed waters.
Twenty PLA generals have been purged in the past 2½ years, losing their place in the National People’s Congress and many other senior military figures have fallen victim to Xi’s anti-corruption drive. The Xiangshan Forum may offer some clarity about the current make-up of the command structure, particularly inside the central military commission, China’s supreme military leadership body.
This month’s military parade showcased a number of advanced weapons systems and unveiled for the first time China’s nuclear triad of missiles launched from land, sea and air. Long a weapons importer, China is now the leading supplier of weapons to many Asian countries, including some security allies of the US.
These weapons sales are generating closer military-to-military relationships with southeast Asian states, some of which are increasingly distrustful of Washington’s strategic reliability. Many of these states will be represented at a high level at the Xiangshan Forum this week, while the US will be sending the military attache from its embassy in Beijing.
