In the morning hours of 16th September, the Minister of National Defence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Admiral Dong Jun took to the stage at the Beijing International Convention Center to deliver an address that officially opened this year’s Xiangshan Forum. Being the 13th edition of conference’s international security and defence caucus, there was a lot that stood out in testament to the progress that has been made thereunder over the years. The fact that over 100 nations were represented for instance. For our purposes here though, we will focus our lenses on the message that Mr. Dong’s speech sent instead.
The military chief set a good tone for his audience not least because while he did not shy away from big issues, he tackled them with a cool-headed temperament. In no ambiguous terms thus, he warned against reckless usage of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) in military endeavours. Minister Dong’s demeanour on this point mirrored that of his ministry’s response a few days prior when the United States of America’s Air Force Secretary Troy Meink publicly affirmed that USA had deployed weaponry in space. There showcasing that Beijing’s preferred approach when it comes to these matters is restraint.
The rationale for this stems from an appreciation of the horrendous pitfalls that humanity has fallen into in the past whenever it has jettisoned prudence in matters of security. In Admiral Dong’s words, “we must bear the lessons of history in mind and remain highly vigilant against all latent manifestations of hegemony, militarism and historical revisionism.” In the face of this reality, the senior military officer explained that the government under which he served was ready to cooperate with other nations under the global security initiative (GSI). Notably, a key attribute of GSI is to take seriously the legitimate security concerns of all nations.
But this opener was not just about painting a picture of what could be, it was also about putting in place mechanisms that will ensure that the espoused good intentions do not go to waste. So when the Defence Minister called upon major powers to shoulder the responsibility of guaranteeing that majority of the world continues to be a conducive place to live and that the parts of it which are presently enduring conflicts overcome the same, he did not stop at that. He further made it known that China would participate in these efforts by among others, sharing its military experience and capacities with the countries that need them.
This would be in continuation with Beijing’s impressive record in say UN peacekeeping― PRC is already the leading contributor of troops among the permanent member states of the Security Council. As for innovation, Hon. Dong Jun stressed that the time was ripe for the global community to engage in extensive dialoguing with the explicit aim of formulating legal frameworks to govern the intersection of security with developments in fields such as AI. Again, we have been here before. All that the defence chief was emphasizing is that we ought to have learnt our lessons by now. Imperfect as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (unlike Donald Trump today) understood that when dealing with technologies of a certain magnitude, the broader interests of humanity ought to take precedent.
Beyond the speech itself, as evidenced by the persons that took to the podium later that day as well as throughout the event, it is evident that its objectives took root fairly early on. The United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre François Renaud Lacroix thus, expressed his enthusiasm over the fact that the Xiangshan Forum advanced multilateralism, a value that he noted the UN shares too. Relatedly, the Secretary General of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation spoke about equal and indivisible security as a notion that the membership of the body he heads were keen on safeguarding.
One of the most remarkable speakers as far as expounding on the concepts that PRC’s Defence chief introduced goes though was Singapore’s Minister of Defence, Chan Chun Sing. Explaining that because technological iterations were happening in “days, not years”, Hon. Chan raised fears of insecurity spiralling if state actors fail to prepare ahead of time. From his standpoint, this necessitated that politicians differentiate between competition on the one hand, and enmity on the other. One model that the minister suggested could help avoiding a conflation of the two categories is being mindful of when a given player’s security aspirations turn into threats or aggravating factors to others. He then went on to demonstrate that this careful balance was not impossible to attain using the illustration of Sino-Singapore relations.
In the end, Dong Jun’s delivery stayed true to the day’s theme; “Build Consensus on Stability, Advance Security Governance Together.” As the Xiangshan Forum attendees go out in the world to forge solutions for the complicated questions that their positions inevitably bring them into contact with, the remarks will have given them something to ponder about.
Joshua Kingdom is a lawyer and a Research Fellow at the Development Watch Centre
