Under the garb of a white paper titled “China’s National Security in the New Era,” released on May 12, 2025, the Chinese Communist Party is trying not only to cement the position of Xi Jinping as the head of the party, the government and the military in order to assume licence to suppress any opposition domestically to the communist rule in China but also is offering an excuse to violate the sovereign rights of other countries in its neighbourhood.
Way back in the 1950s, the CCP under the leadership of Mao Zedong had used a similar excuse to invade and occupy Tibet. The excuse at that time was that this was necessary to secure the “backdoor of China” and prevent any external aggression from threatening China through Tibet. It was a lame excuse because there was no immediate threat to justify the Chinese invasion of Lhasa in 1950. The British had left the sub-continent. India was in the ‘Panchsheel’ (five principles of peaceful co-existence) mood of bonhomie, the communist government in Russia was still friendly with China and the U.S. did not have much interest in Tibet. In fact, pleas from the rulers of Tibet to the U.S. for assistance in the face of imminent Chinese aggression had fallen on deaf ears in Washington.
Now the white paper issued by the State Council of China titled ‘China’s National Security in the New Era’ declares that China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, especially in the cases of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and maritime rights, are non-negotiable in the interest of development of China. Thus, under the pretext of protecting the developmental interest of China, the CCP now wants to perpetuate its illegal rules in Tibet and Xinjiang, continue and deepen the violation of human rights in Hong Kong and invade and occupy Taiwan.
The protection of maritime rights is of course an euphemism for bringing the entire South China Sea under the domain of China, denying other littoral states like the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan their sovereign rights in their territorial waters; and extending Chinese hegemony in the wider Indo-Pacific.
To put the issues in perspective, Tibet always had an independent existence till 1959 when the 14th Dalai Lama left the plateau, Xinjiang, known as East Turkestan, was annexed by the Manchu dynasty in China in the mid-18th century. Taiwan had an independent existence since the civil war in China in the first half of the 20th century. China is planning to seize the island territory by force. Beijing has been trampling on human rights in Hong Kong in gross violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration of1984 and is trying to occupy the whole South China Sea in blatant violation of the provision of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. The emphasis in the white paper on “ethnic unity” and “religious harmony” indicates that Tibet and Xinjiang will continue to be suppressed.
Yet, according to analysts, the white paper on ‘China’s National Security in the New Era,’ which lays down ensuring “political security” as the main task of the Chinese Communist Party, has been drawn up mainly to give licence to the CCP to suppress the challenges to the communist rule. The white paper is really a product of the insecurity that President Xi Jinping faces at home, mainly because of the decline of the Chinese economy. The slowing down in the rate of economic growth can be attributed to falling exports, rising unemployment and a slump in the real estate sector, the main engine powering the Chinese economy in the era of double-digit growth. The autocratic rule of the CCP has prevailed because of the high growth rate of the Chinese economy sustained from the days of Deng Xiaoping. Now with the growth rate slowing down, mandarins of the CCP are nervous that the Chinese people will throw away the yoke.
The white paper is a desperate attempt to safeguard the political security, that means ensuring the leadership of the CCP and the socialist system permanently at all costs. This in turn will cement the position of Xi Jinping as the head of the party, as the General Secretary of the CCP, the head of the government, President of China and the head of the military including Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
The concentration of all power in China in one person, not witnessed since the days of Mao Zedong, will pave the way for suppression of any opposition to the communist rule, which may come in the form of political opposition or social unrest. Public security has been defined in the white paper as stopping any attempt to separate the people from the party, and not ensuring law and order or protecting the fundamental rights of the people.
The economic policies of Xi Jinping have hitherto been marked by a refusal to open up for fear of foreign influence undermining political security. Unfortunately, this has turned out to be self-defeating. This policy is standing in the way of revival of the economy of China while the declining economy is a threat to the continued rule of the CCP. The white paper advocates maintaining scientific and technological security. But this has taken the form of harassing foreign companies and their employees with crippling data control regulations and targeting them for political gains. To ensure securing of overseas Chinese investments, Beijing is now putting pressure on Islamabad to allow the deployment of Chinese security personnel to ensure safety of China Pakistan Economic Corridor projects in Pakistan. Such conditions will make Belt and Road Initiative projects unacceptable to other countries.
China, as the white paper says, wants to control the industrial supply chains by being the supplier of goods required globally, while at the same time keep out foreign influence by the imposition of tariff and other control measures. Now it has become evident that other countries will not accept this Chinese strategy lying down. The U.S. has retaliated by the imposition of massive tariff on imports from China, thus crippling the Chinese economy. By shutting out foreign influence and refusing to reform, China has also lost the sources of supply of cutting edge technology which the western nations control.
President Xi Jinping is thus faced with a dilemma. If he has to secure the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, he will also have to face international isolation.