The Report to the 20th CPC National Congress, for the first time, made a systematic discussion of national security an independent part of the report. The statement plays an important guiding role as the Party and the government seek to balance development and security—the two major issues at present to build a modern national security system.

National security is a social issue which arose alongside the concept of the state, but for many years, it has not been systematically elaborated upon. Actually, the concept of “national security” appeared as early as the pre-Qin era (prior to 221 BCE) and the concept was abbreviated as the term Guoan. In later historical documents, words that reflected “national security” occasionally appeared, but there has been a lack of a systematic discussion on the concept.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Party and the state placed a high premium on the issue of national security, but for many years, the term “national security” was not used, and there was no systematic theory for national security.

According to published materials, the first national document to use the term “national security” was the 1983 government work report, which specifically contained a declaration on the establishment of the Ministry of National Security. Some people were misled to believe that national security was merely about espionage and intelligence activities, as well as other related security issues.

In the 1992 report to the 14th CPC National Congress, the term “national security” was used for the first time. However, it only appeared once throughout the entire report, and it was mentioned in the same paragraph as that of military defense, armed police, and public security, and therefore had obvious traditional security features.

In the report to the 20th CPC National Congress, national security has for the first time become a separate section, and its importance has been further highlighted. In the report to the 19th CPC National Congress, there was a paragraph which started with the phrase “effectively safeguarding national security” and national security was expounded upon, but the paragraph does not lift national security to the status of being an independent section of the whole report. In a new approach, the issue of national security has for the first time becomes an entirely independent section of the report to the 20th CPC National Congress—the 11th Section is titled “Modernizing China’s National Security System and Capacity and Safeguarding National Security and Social Stability.”

There are six paragraphs in total in this section. The first paragraph functions as an introduction, which emphasizes the need to pursue a holistic approach to national security; the second paragraph is a detailed elaboration of the approach; from the third to the sixth paragraphs, the titles are respectively “Improving the national security system,” “Strengthening our capacity for safeguarding national security,” “Enhancing public safety governance,” and “Improving the social governance system.”

This type of text arrangement which places public security, social governance and social security in the context of national security issues, breaks through the old cage of putting the discussion of national security as a subset of military defense, foreign affairs, and other topics.

The words “security” and “national security” appear significantly more frequently in the entire report than in previous congress reports and government documents. As the number of words mentioned has increased, the vision is also more comprehensive, rich, and profound than before. Meanwhile, there is also an obviously important feature in the discussion—the modernization of national security.

Although national security is crucial, it does not occupy all a country’s interests. If we focus on national security in isolation from development, and deal with national security issues with the mentality of absolute security, we may deviate from the right strategic path in terms of the overall strategy, and ultimately national security would be undermined, threatened, and hazarded.

Liu Yuejin is a professor from the School of National Security at the University of International Relations.