The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) clearly stated “We must take the people’s security as our ultimate goal, political security as our fundamental task, economic security as our foundation, military, technological, cultural, and social security as important pillars, and international security as a support. We will both uphold national security and create the conditions for ensuring it. We will take coordinated steps to ensure external and internal security, homeland and public security, and our own security and common security. With this new security architecture, we will be able to better safeguard China’s new pattern of development.”

There are six aspects in the report to the 20th CPC National Congress on the worldview and methodology of the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. These include “putting the people first,” “maintaining self-confidence and standing on our own feet,” “upholding fundamental principles and breaking new ground,” “adopting a problem-oriented approach,” “applying systems thinking,” and “maintaining a global vision.” Each of these aspects is of great value for correctly understanding and handling national security issues. In particular, “applying systems thinking” is of overall strategic significance.

Theoretical innovation

Applying systems thinking directs us toward correctly understanding and handling the relationship between development and security. For many years, the international academic community has followed the tradition of separating security and development issues. It seems that development issues belong to the field of economics, while security issues belong to the field of political science. As a result, economists do not study security issues, and political scientists do not study development issues. In economics, prominent approaches such as “mercantilism,” “liberalism,” and “Keynesianism” ignore security issues. This is because the efficiency-first principle of economics naturally regards growth based on optimal resource allocation as the most critical issue. In the economic imagination, emphasizing security is a constraint on development.

China insists that development and security are closely linked and indivisible, and that national security and development should be coordinated. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, has adhered to the epistemology of dialectical materialism and used systems thinking to understand and handle development and security issues, has realized the theoretical innovation of “a holistic approach to national security,” and has promoted security through development while ensuring development through security.

Holistic methodology

Applying systems thinking provides a basic method for correctly understanding and dealing with both traditional and non-traditional security. The security issues typically discussed in traditional theories only cover political and military aspects, whereas economic, social, cultural, and sci-tech security are generally excluded. Obviously, this is a great limitation. The country’s external security is based on its composite national strength. In this sense, the country’s political influence, economic, military, sci-tech strength, cultural soft power, and social vitality together constitute the country’s composite national strength.

What needs to be emphasized here is that modern countries are in the process of rapid and extensive globalization, and various non-traditional security problems are increasingly prominent and bring serious challenges to individual countries. The reality that traditional and non-traditional security issues are intertwined requires a systems thinking approach to contend with these problems.

Coordinated development

Applying systems thinking provides fundamental guidance for correctly understanding and handling external and internal security, homeland and public security, and our own and common security. In the process of dealing with the above problems, traditional security theories have serious limitations, which manifest in the emphasis on external security at the neglect of internal security, on homeland security at the neglect of public security, and on their own security at the neglect of common security. Of course, the international academic community is increasingly aware of the above shortcomings, so the concepts of “human security,” “social security,” and “development security” have been introduced and discussed. In fact, in the context of increasingly complex security issues, no country can distance itself. The so-called “absolute security” pursued by certain countries is absolutely impossible.

On the contrary, only when we attach importance to external, homeland, and our own security, and also to internal, public, and common security can we correctly understand and handle these issues. This is also the core of “a holistic approach to national security” proposed by China. Socialist China always adheres to the principle of “putting the people first” and is committed to common prosperity economically, “the running of the country by the people” politically, “common security” internationally, advocates “humanity’s shared values,” and promotes the construction of a human community with a shared future. This is the inevitable result of adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of the times, as well as the inevitable outcome of applying systems thinking.

Dai Changzheng is dean of the School of International Relations at the University of International Business and Economics.