“The White Paper refers to the speech that Xi Jinping made during the summit — Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia in 2014, so many of those ideas were expressed earlier,” Kashin said.
However, the expert said that this is the first time that such a highly detailed view of the Chinese regional security has been clearly laid out.
According to the expert this document can be interpreted as a sign of China's willingness to assume a leadership role in ensuring security in the region and “to start the formulation of rules of the game in Asia.”
“The White Paper, therefore, is an important step in the development of China, its model policy of a great world power,” Kashin said.
Unlike the 2015 issue of White Paper, this document does not focus as much on military strategy as the previous issue. The present document focuses more on the positive aspects of China's relations with major political players in Asia.
Even in the description of China's relations with the US and Japan, the emphasis is on the positive aspects of their relationship, although it recognizes the presence of certain problems and threats as well.
“Extremely high evaluation is given to the current strategic partnership with Russia. It is also important to note that in its regional security concept of development, China emphasizes the need for continuity of the already created mechanisms in East Asia. It stresses on security dialogue and willingness to use them and build on them, instead of making them an alternative,” Kashin said.
“Such a model of relations naturally contributes to the promotion of China's interests that will solve problems through a bilateral dialogue, which will be carried out with much less influential players in the international arena,” the expert stressed.
Kashin also mentioned that it is noteworthy to notice that when listing the major threats to regional security, China avoids mention of the Taiwanese issue altogether, despite the fact that in recent years the situation has been escalating.
According to the expert by avoiding mentioning it China has clearly emphasized that the issue is an internal one and cannot be the subject of broad international debate.
It can be assumed that the publication of the document is a step towards the revitalization of China's diplomacy on global and regional security issues, including missile defense issues, non-proliferation, and the situation in the South China Sea.
