The international community should advocate the concept of comprehensive, common and cooperative security, making the “global village” a grand stage for the pursue of joint development.

“Peace, like air and sunshine, is hardly noticed when people are benefiting from it. But none of us could live without it.” Lately at the 2013 annual Boao Asian Forum, President Xi Jinping appealed for the international community to advocate the concept of comprehensive security, common security and cooperative security.

The recently released white paper The Diversified Employment of China's Armed Forces also reaffirms the above proposal. This security concept is the inheritance and expansion of China’s new security concept which was advocated over a long time, and includes mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and cooperation.

Emphasizing comprehensive security reflects the trends of current global development. As traditional security threats have increasingly interweaved with non-traditional security threats, the connotation of security is no longer only limited to the traditional military security. It has expanded to other fields such as politics, economy, energy, networks, public health and so on. Comprehensive measures must be taken to seek both temporary and permanent solutions to preserve security.

Pursuing common security has met the need of interdependency among different countries. In the “global village”, all countries depend on each other and no country can obtain absolute security alone. While seeking your own security, you should ensure others’ security as well.

Promoting cooperative security is an effective way to achieve security. War and confrontation usually lead to worsening violence, while dialogue and cooperation are an effective option to reduce divergences and disputes. Only through cooperation can security issues be resolved.

For years, China has been striving to preserve global peace and stability, which just reflects the above new security concept. China attaches great importance to comprehensive security, actively participating in combating all sorts of global challenges such as terrorism, climate change, food and energy security, major natural disasters and so on. China has been vigorously preserving cooperative security and has sent the largest number of military personnel to participate in peacekeeping operations among the Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council. China has been actively promoting cooperative security, carrying out security cooperation such as anti-terrorism, attacking pirates, joint law enforcement along with SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) member states and ASEAN countries, as well as advocating resolving friction and disputes with neighboring countries through consultation and negotiation.

China has been actively advocating for the great powers to jointly practice this new security concept. Last month President Xi Jinping expressed during his visit in Russia that in the face of complex security threats, no country can go it alone and it is even worse if some countries are obsessed with military force. The only right choice is to achieve collective and common security through cooperation. The Sino-Russia Joint Declaration during Xi’s visit stressed that both sides should push for the building of the new security concept of common equality and non-separation based on mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and cooperation, and persist in resolving international disputes and conflicts through peaceful means instead of war.

Upon US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent visit to China, China and the US decided to establish a cyber workgroup under the framework of strategic security dialogue, enhancing communication on cyber security issues. Recently，the situation in the Korean Peninsula is in high tension. History and reality have shown again and again that conflicts and confrontations are not beneficial to any country and only by advocating and practicing new security concepts can a right solution to the Korean Peninsula issue be found.

Asian and even global peace and security can come true as hoped only by following the concept of comprehensive security, common security and cooperative security.

Translated by Yu Hui