Xi Jinping and the National Security Commission: policy coordination and political power

Abstract

This article discusses the rationale for, and progress to date of, creating a National Security Commission in China, a move first announced in late 2013. Central impulses for the Commission's establishment are to help better coordinate a very fragmented bureaucracy and to advance Xi Jinping's drive to consolidate his personal power over the internal and external coercive and diplomatic arms of the governing structure. The Commission is a work in progress and its full institutional maturation will take a protracted period. In the midst of the Commission's construction, there is considerable confusion among subordinates in the foreign policy and security areas about lines of authority and ultimate objectives. Beyond Xi Jinping, it is difficult to discern an authoritative voice. It is an open question as to whether this institutional attempt to achieve coordination will improve, or further complicate, China's long-standing coordination problem, some recent foreign policy achievements notwithstanding. The Commission's focus is heavily weighted toward internal and periphery security, but it also is an institution-building response to new global and transnational issues. It is not self-evident that Xi, or any single individual, can effectively manage the span of control he is constructing.

Introduction

A simple question initially motivated the research reported here: what is China's National Security Commission (Zhongyang guojia anquan weiyuanhui), established in January 2014 and announced in connection with the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of November 2013? This question immediately raised at least two second-order issues: what are the organization's missions (e.g. the balance between domestic and international security), structure, staffing, operation and activities to date? And, what are the implications of this new organization for the roles and prerogatives of preexistent players and organizations in the foreign, military and domestic security policy-making realms? Despite the progress reported here in addressing these questions, at this early date in the institution's evolution many questions and uncertainties remain. The National Security Commission (NSC) is a work in progress.

The exploration of this new institution raises two broader, more important issues than simply how this potentially key policy institution works and what its practical consequences for China's internal and external behavior may be. The first of these questions concerns Xi Jinping's transition to power. When considering the transition to power of newly elected American presidents, for example, we fully expect them to put in place new advisors and key agency heads and to structure the inter-agency process in a manner suiting their own objectives, skills, political needs and comfort level. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski, famously in the case of China policy, largely bypassed the Department of State and Congress in shaping the momentous shifts they were contemplating in the 1970s by utilizing an empowered National Security Council staff. Both Nixon and Carter brought in bureaucratic outsiders to help effect the changes they most sought, believing that the established institutions and personalities would obstruct their aims. Xi Jinping is doing just this, trying to construct new institutional pathways to shape policy and bring in new people not so beholden to the previous constellation of interests. He also is using the creation of the NSC to seek to consolidate his personal sway in the domestic security, foreign policy and military realms. In short, Xi is both driving to achieve better policy coordination and greater personal control in the system.

Both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were inheritors of broad foreign policy from Deng Xiaoping and both placed considerable store in the professional foreign policy apparatus (the State Council, its relevant ministries and the public intellectuals associated with these structures) to advise on, define, shape and conduct policy. When Xi Jinping came to power, it appears from interviews1 that he believed that foreign (and internal security) policy needed considerable adjustment, that he wanted to be the prime mover toward a vision of a rejuvenated China more active on the world stage, and that he is less comfortable with the professional foreign policy bureaucracy and its associated public intellectuals than were Jiang and Hu. Xi also is less at ease than his predecessor with the relatively independent internal security apparatus that Zhou Yongkang had consolidated and with the free-wheeling corruption and untethered military Hu Jintao had tolerated. A notable Global Times article of 18 December 2014 put it this way, referring to a PLA Daily article published the previous day: ‘This article is a show of the authorities’ determination to continue the corruption fight despite resistance from some interest groups, analysts said, though the fight inside the military is much harder than the fight inside the government or the Party’.2 In January 2015 Xi struck out at the Ministry of State Security and 16 generals.

In short, Xi arguably is trying to adjust (or build new) institutions and put in place new personnel to better reflect his will. One way to look at this is in organizational terms—he seeks to make the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the key instrument in both developing (and perhaps implementing) policy, feeling that the professional, state bureaucracy is not highly reflective of his vision—the professional bureaucracy is too cautious, too co-opted by traditional arrangements and not intellectually innovative. On 23 January 2015, the Politburo convened a meeting in which it explicitly called for state institutions to tow the Party line more obediently, saying:

It [the Politburo] stressed that the party organs at the NPC [National People's Congress] Standing Committee, the State Council, the CPPCC [Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference] National Committee, the SPC [Supreme People's Court] and the SPP [Supreme People's Procuratorate] should always stand alongside the CPC [Communist Party of China] Central Committee in terms of principles, policies and actions. They should fully implement the central leadership's decisions and make [sure?] they all work for the same end.3

What all this will add up to in the end and how the Party can be an effective implementer remains to be seen. In an extensive November 2014 speech at the ‘Central Foreign Policy Work Conference’ General Secretary Xi said,

We must enhance the central and unified leadership of the Party, reform and improve institutions and mechanisms concerning foreign affairs, step up their coordination among different sectors, government bodies, and localities, increase strategic input, ensure well-regulated foreign affairs management, and strengthen the ranks of officials managing foreign affairs, so as to provide strong support for opening new horizons in China's diplomacy.4

This doesn't sound like someone fully satisfied with the foreign policy and domestic security policy-making processes that he inherited.

A second big question is related to the first, but remains largely unaddressed below—to what extent will Xi Jinping be able to restore the strong-man leadership role that he seemingly envisions for himself and that is reflected in his acquisition of all major cross-system integrator roles [chairmanships of leading groups and the Central Military Commission (CMC)] and his penchant to fashion a far more personalized leadership image? It is worth observing, for example, that less than two years into his job an anthology of his speeches was issued under the title, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. Put simply, is he trying to impose a degree of personal control over a pluralized society and ever-more complex bureaucracy that they will find difficult to accept? Is Xi defining for himself a role that is so extensive that it may exceed anyone's span of effective control? The new society and greatly changed bureaucracy produced by three-plus decades of reform is not the same governance challenge that Deng Xiaoping faced when he returned to office in mid-1977. Nonetheless, the observer must be impressed with Xi's advances to date.

Recalcitrant and fractious society and bureaucracy aside, if one examines the aggregate of foreign policy initiatives taken in connection with the 2014 APEC and G-20 meetings, and the 28–29 November 2014 Foreign Policy Work Conference, their dynamism and coherence are impressive: a seeming decrease in the temperature of Sino–Japanese conflict; free trade arrangements with South Korea and Australia (two US allies); climate, military and trade progress with the United States; and, forging ahead with an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, BRICS Bank and Silk Road initiatives in maritime areas and in Central Asia (e.g. Kazakhstan). What we see emerging is a simultaneous attempt to lower the temperature of abrasions on China's periphery while enunciating a strategically ambitious long-term external policy, amidst a tightening internal political circumstance.

These are some of the larger issues to which the case study below speaks. We now turn to examining the new, evolving NSC, the systemic problems which gave rise to it, and what we know about this new organization and the challenges of building it, returning to larger implications at the conclusion of this essay.

China's coordination problem

Coordinating Chinese foreign and security policy has become progressively more difficult as the post-Mao reform era has unfolded since mid-1977. Many developments have made this so: the number of countries having established formal diplomatic relations with China has about tripled since Beijing gained the ‘China seat’ in the United Nations in fall 1971; globalization has extended the nation's interests and reach to cultures, peoples and geographic areas with which the People's Republic of China (PRC), in modern times, has not had much prior interaction (e.g. the Middle East, Africa and the Arctic); the spatial domains of PRC operations have expanded from being a land power to increasingly being present on and under all oceans, and in the air, space and cyber space; the number of domestic security, diplomatic and international security policy-relevant bureaucracies has expanded to deal with more countries, trans-boundary networks, multilateral forums and international bodies, and non-governmental organizations; just a few decades ago, words like ‘Jihadism’ and ‘climate change’ were used principally by specialists, but today they are an integral part of China's diplomatic vocabulary; and, China has moved from being an irrelevance in global trade and finance to being a principal trading partner of every country of economic consequence in the world.

These changes have entailed building bureaucracies, created newfound interests and generated a need for decisions that have costs, benefits and tradeoffs. All this requires a broadly conceived central foreign and security policy coordination mechanism of increasing sophistication, a mechanism that can provide top leaders with options, help establish priorities, evaluate costs and gains, and then enforce implementation on an increasingly fractious organizational structure and society below. If nothing else, if Xi is to get his hands around foreign and domestic security policy, he needs a vehicle for his ambitions—the NSC is part of this effort.

There is another central aspect of the coordination problem—the tight linkage between external and internal security in Chinese thinking. This is a concern not only in today's PRC, but also was an ongoing worry in pre-1949 China. Throughout history the Chinese have said—‘Nei Luan, Wai Huan’, loosely translated as: ‘When the inside [of China] is chaotic, external forces take advantage’. The maintenance of internal cohesion and stability is the indispensable core of Chinese national security, and key to this is effectively dealing with the periodic attempts of the outside world to subvert China, to weaken it from within. Many Chinese are predisposed to think that the weapon of choice of the outside world (not least the United States) to defeat China is to first attack the periphery and diminish internal social and political cohesion. The first task of security, therefore, is internal control, social cohesion maintenance and pacifying the periphery—‘stability maintenance’ (wei wen).

This traditional outlook fits comfortably with the Communist Party's thinking about internal security, with the ever-present focus on external subversion and domestic fifth columns. In late 2014, an article appeared in Hongqi Wengao [Red Flag Manuscript], an authoritative Party publication, entitled: ‘The historical necessity of politically rectifying intellectuals during the early PRC’.5 This allegorical piece uses the early post-1949 era (when many of China's scholars and intellectuals were perceived to be in need of ‘rectification’ because of their presumed contamination by American aims and values) to speak to today—this article seems to be a shot across the bow of those PRC citizens who today are perceived to be too close to the United States. If that was not clear enough, in January 2015 China's Minister of Education, Yuan Guiren, spoke on limiting the use of Western educational materials in higher education saying that professors must adhere to the Party's political, legal and moral ‘bottom lines’.6

Beyond the obvious stresses and strains which rapid economic and social change, mounting socio-economic inequality, procedural injustice and rapid urbanization create, China has the added problem of what Beijing views as its unreliable periphery, administratively and politically part of China, but not of China in ethnicity or spirit—Tibet, Xinjiang, sometimes Mongolia and Hong Kong. Then, there is the special problem of Taiwan that has not been administratively part of the PRC but whose eventual incorporation is central to regime legitimacy. Some of these areas are of such ongoing concern to the Center that they (Taiwan and Hong Kong/Macao) have their own leading small group devoted to them.7 In the past, and the Chinese suspect now as well, outside forces (the West during the Cold War and periodically thereafter) have used their involvement with these places to compound governance problems for China itself. It is this logic chain that saw ‘the black hands’ of the United States and Britain at work in the late 2014 Hong Kong demonstrations. In an earlier era of strain with Moscow in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was seen as trying to weaken Beijing's grip on Xinjiang. Of course, such discourse also helps deflect blame from Beijing's own policies toward these areas.

It is this framework that predisposes Beijing to see problems in Tibet as derivative of the Dalai Lama's travels to the West or the hidden agenda of India, rather than Beijing's own migration and cultural assimilation policies. The presence of the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation in Washington, DC, for example, reinforces the belief in Beijing that the United States seeks to use internal discontent in Xinjiang as a lever on China. The point is, there is no clear separation in Chinese thinking between internal and external security; they are interconnected and hence coordination between internally and externally focused bureaucracies is essential. The 23 January 2015 Politburo announcement mentioned above ‘warned that China was facing unprecedented security risks and should remain on alert’.8

Beginning in the 1980s, and becoming progressively more evident as we have moved into the new millennium, both foreign and domestic observers have noted that sometimes China's bureaucratic left hand does not know what the right hand is doing—that one ministry or organization does not know about another's activities, one province or locality competes with others, and that often, the Center is surprised to learn what its local agents are up to. Senior Chinese leaders do not always receive accurate and/or timely information from below and faithful implementation is not always the norm. There has been a particularly obvious disjuncture between the military and diplomatic bureaucracies over time, but the incongruities have not been limited to this realm. Coordination among the many civilian, military, central bureaucratic and local maritime actors often is problematic. Linda Jakobson tells us, for instance:

Despite the image of Xi as a strong leader, systematic problems and fractured authority in China leave substantial room for myriad maritime security actors to push their own agendas, especially in the South China Sea. These include local governments, law enforcement agencies, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), resource companies, and fishermen … Many actors push the boundaries of the permissible, using the pretext of Xi's very general guidelines on safeguarding maritime rights … The central leadership has tried to better coordinate maritime policies, in particular by restructuring the maritime enforcement agencies. But the plan to establish a unified China Coast Guard, announced in March 2013, has not yet been fully realized. The complex management structure of the consolidated organization has given rise to a power struggle between the State Oceanic Administration and Ministry of Public Security that has yet to be resolved.9

Similarly, there often is a disjuncture among and between trade bureaucracies and other interests, with powerful Chinese multinational corporations sometimes going their own way abroad.

Along the way some of the coordination problems outside analysts have observed include: in the 1980s, military entities and arms sales firms sold missiles and other dangerous technologies to countries (Saudi Arabia and Iran) in circumstances that agitated the West and created problems for a PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs that appeared out of the loop; dozens of agencies with maritime assets operate in near- and distant-waters, extracting resources and making claims that can create conflicts within China and with foreigners that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or others have to clean up;10 China's Foreign Ministry and domestic development agencies such as the National Development and Reform Commission have not always been on the same page with respect to climate change policy; the military has sometimes conducted weapons tests and other operations (2007, 2010, 2012, 2013) that have created physical or diplomatic debris by taking actions about which the Foreign Ministry apparently had no prior knowledge; and, the military has not always told its civilian masters what those leaders needed to know at the outset of a crisis, making subsequent resolution more difficult (2001). Indeed, the outside observer could reach the conclusion that the system seems designed to keep the Ministry of Foreign Affairs out of the loop sometimes, inasmuch as the CMC outranks the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and because there is a conceptual division of labor between operational ‘military’ and ‘diplomatic’ activities that disrupts inter-agency communication even though in the ‘real’ world of international relations, there often is no practical distinction between ‘military’ and ‘diplomatic’ affairs.11

In short, policy coordination is not only a topic of academic interest; it also is a practical concern to Beijing and those with whom it deals. The increasing reach of China's security, economic and diplomatic apparatus beyond its shores creates a parallel requirement that Beijing's actions be based on a thorough inter-agency process that coordinates intelligence, policy formulation and implementation across very complex, fragmented and deep hierarchies. Parenthetically, the issue of civilian control of the military and policy coordination can be related issues, but they are not identical problems. One can have broad civilian control of the military while, simultaneously, having substantial problems of coordination throughout the policy process, as You Ji explains.12 On the other hand, it appears that Xi Jinping does not take military responsiveness for granted, delivering a speech to the PLA delegation to the National People's Congress on 11 March 2013, entitled ‘Build people's armed forces that follow the Party's commands, are able to win and exemplary in conduct’.13

The Chinese bureaucratic matrix is a system of three systemically central (vertical) hierarchies (the state, Party and military) variously going from the top down to the province, county, township and village levels. Each of these three great hierarchies intersects with up to six horizontal, geographically based levels (center, province, special district, county, township and village) of the governing system, creating a grid/matrix with literally thousands of intersections (nodes of decision) throughout the system. Each of the systemically central hierarchies has millions of individuals in it reaching down through a very diverse continent the size of the United States. In the state apparatus (the ministries, commissions and other special organizations) there are functional/policy stove pipes, many of which (e.g. Commerce, Intelligence, Public Security, Defense, Foreign Affairs, Education, Health, Technology, etc.) have a piece of the foreign, security, domestic security and trade policy action within its purview. The Communist Party also has organizations responsible for domestic security and foreign affairs, not least the Central Military Commission (Zhongyang junwei), the International (or Liaison) Department (Zhonglianbu), The United Front Work Department (Tongzhanbu) and the Party's General Office (Zhongyang bangongting).

A central policy-making challenge has been achieving timely coordination among these many diverse actors and all the decision nodes throughout the system—there often is inadequate horizontal coordination among stove pipes, with the system having so many equal and parallel stove pipes that it becomes difficult to discern who has final say on any given policy issue until one reaches the overloaded top leaders who have an enormous nominal span of control, but limited attention and information. The military, domestic security and diplomatic chains of command only intersect at the feet of the senior leader—General Secretary and President Xi Jinping, who chairs the Central Military Commission (CMC) and who, as explained below, chairs the principal foreign, security and domestic security cross-system integrators.

In order to attempt to achieve coordination of policy, the PRC bureaucratic tool box has a number of instruments, the first being the Communist Party itself which has over 85 million members who are seeded throughout all other state and military organizations and are so located within them to try to assure policy coherence. Of course, while the Party as an organization could be viewed as the ultimate cross-system integrator, it also can be seen as a central cause of the coordination problem, running in parallel with the state and military hierarchies across the multitude of levels of Chinese society. Moreover, Party members can be co-opted by the localities and organizations in which they are embedded, compounding, not resolving, the coordination problem. In addition, the General Office of the Central Committee in Zhongnanhai plays an important role, as described below—Xi is building up its domestic security and foreign policy voice by enlisting (young) personnel and placing the executive body of the NSC in it.

One way the Party as an organization can try to bring coordination to both the formulation and implementation of policy is to convene a ‘work conference’ (Gongzuo huiyi) to which are brought organizations and individuals germane to a given policy—in November 2014, for instance, a major ‘Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs’ was convened and attended by all members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, with the list of attending organizations and levels of the system including: provincial and municipal leaders, bureaucratic officials throughout the State Council, military departments, the central Party bureaucracy, the ‘Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps’, centrally run enterprises and financial institutions, ambassadors and consuls general representing the PRC abroad, courts, prosecutors, and many others.14

Other tools in the kit are the above-mentioned ‘cross-system integrators’, standing and sometimes ephemeral interdepartmental committees that bring together principals and representatives from affected bureaucracies to hash out priorities and make recommendations to final decision makers on the Politburo and its Standing Committee.15 These Committees, often called ‘leading small groups’ (Lingdao xiaozu), are somewhat analogous to ‘principal’ and ‘deputies’ meetings (the inter-agency process) in the US system, though the important foreign policy-relevant groups in the PRC have more fixity and identity with a general office and a pivotal coordinator. Even leading small groups have their problems, however, because there are leading small groups on comprehensive economic reform, foreign policy, maritime affairs, political-legal affairs and other areas that make decisions and recommendations not always consistent with one another—they too need coordination.

Yet another way to try to achieve coordination is to have General Secretary Xi Jinping chair almost all of the key leading groups, but this raises the issue of his feasible span of control. In addition, Vice Premiers and State Councilors function as referees among contending localities and bureaucracies when disputes arise. Because conflict is built into the system, and because the cross-system integration process does not always resolve the thorniest issues, the truly tough problems get kicked up to a (currently) seven-person Standing Committee of the Politburo, where its members are overloaded generalists.

The concept and construction of a National Security Commission (Zhongyang guojia anquan weiyuanhui)

It is in the context of the above discussion that the January 2014 establishment of China's NSC must be considered. The idea of an NSC, an inspiration in part originating with President Jiang Zemin after his 1997 exposure to the US National Security Council (NSC) while in Washington, DC, subsequently was debated in his administration and thereafter in the era of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. Chinese scholars have studied and compared various countries’ models for NSCs, often showing particular interest in the lessons that can be gleaned from the US experience.16 They see China's establishment of its own NSC within the broader context of a global trend over the past few decades of countries such as France, India, Pakistan, Russia and Japan all creating NSC-like organizations.17 For China the idea went nowhere in the 2000s, with life breathed into the concept only when Xi Jinping assumed national leadership, albeit a conception that embraced a far different balance between internal and external security as compared to the NSC in the United States, and perhaps a far different balance than Jiang Zemin may initially have conceived.

The National Security Commission was announced in the documents coming out of the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee in November 2013.18 This announcement, however, was, in part, foretold in a seminal 2013 article by State Councilor Yang Jiechi entitled, ‘Innovations in China's diplomatic theory and practice under new conditions’, Yang being the highest-ranking official in the foreign policy system with specialized and specific responsibility for foreign affairs. In this piece in the section entitled ‘Putting forth the need for enhanced coordination in diplomatic work to ensure unified central leadership over the operations’, Yang said: ‘To better coordinate the country's domestic and international agenda, the Party Central Committee attaches great importance to a holistic management of foreign affairs. It calls for balanced considerations, overall planning, unified command and coordinated implementation’.19 At about the same time as Yang's article was published, Xi Jinping spoke at a 24 October 2013 seminar on ‘neighborhood diplomacy’, saying:

For best results we need to promote reform and innovation in diplomatic work and strengthen the planning of our diplomatic activities. To achieve greater progress we should build a general framework to coordinate diplomatic work, weigh every relevant factor, and give full play to every department involved.20

The announcement of the new Commission described it and its anticipated role as follows: ‘China needs to both safeguard sovereignty, security and development interests overseas and maintain domestic political security and social stability’.21 Six months later, speaking to the first meeting of the NSC on 15 April 2014, Xi delivered remarks entitled ‘A holistic view of national security’, saying that

The aim of the establishment of the Council [sic, Commission] is to better handle new developments and new tasks in the realm of national security, and build a national security system which is centralized, integrated, highly efficient, and authoritative, so as to improve leadership over the work of national security.22

In the year after the Commission's (abbreviated Guoanwei) November 2013 announcement and January 2014 establishment,23 the various domestic and foreign security, military and diplomatic bureaucracies have been trying to hammer out a ‘National Security Law’, the purpose of which would be to give statutory definition to the NSC, its mission and scope of action, its composition, and its relationship to other organs—a draft of this law was submitted to the NPC in December 2014 and ‘it will replace a previous law, which took effect in 1993 [that] has been renamed the Counterespionage Law in line with its content’.24 For a long time there has been the question of what role the Standing Committee of the Politburo, which generally handles foreign policy and security decisions of utmost importance, would play if there were a strong NSC, among other issues. There apparently has been major conflict over the contours of this legislation because so many parties have a stake in the outcome,25 entities that (in no particular order of importance) include: the State Council (Guowuyuan); the Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group (Zhongyang waishi gongzuo lingdao xiaozu);26 the Central Military Commission [and the weaker Ministry of National Defense (Guofangbu)]; the Central National Security Leading Small Group (Zhongyang guojia anquan gongzuo lingdao xiaozu); the Ministry of State Security (Guojia anquanbu); the Central Politics and Law Commission (Zhongyang zhengfawei); the Ministry of Public Security (Gonganbu); the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Waijiaobu); the Central Maritime Rights Leading Small Group (Zhongyang haiyangquanyi gongzuo lingdao xiaozu); and others. Even though the NSC is supposed to limit conflict among these various bodies by streamlining the national security policy-making process, Wen Wangyong notes that because the NSC is in its early stages of development, it will still have to rely on these organizations while it gradually establishes its own supporting institutions.27

In early November 2014, President Xi Jinping signed the Counterespionage Law, reportedly ‘replacing the 1993 National Security Law’, as mentioned above; it reportedly aims at ‘foreign spies and Chinese individuals and organizations that collaborate with them’.28 Xinhua News Agency explained that China faced ‘a new situation, and new tasks in the security realm’.29 It is against this background that one sees investigations and examinations of foreign NGOs operating in China and Chinese citizens sometimes reluctant to take grants from foreign entities associated with alleged foreign strategies of ‘peaceful evolution’—subversion.30

At the NSC's first meeting on 15 April 2014,31 President Xi Jinping articulated the concept of ‘holistic’ or ‘overall national security’ (Zongti guojia anquanguan), mentioning 11 broad areas of concern.32 On 6 May 2014, the first National Security Blue Book was published, reportedly explaining the issues ‘Beijing sees itself facing in internal security—including Western nations’ cultural hegemony threatening China's socialist values, terrorism, and the “export” of Western democracy threatening Chinese ideology …’.33 National security has in considerable measure become regime security, which means security of the Communist Party—‘political security’.34

Beyond this, four NSC functions were identified in a People's Daily article:35 the first, and arguably most important, is developing a national security strategy that is bigger than simply military strategy, a requirement reflecting the increasing complexity of the world and the insufficiency of China's previous domestic security, military and other plans to deal with it—all this ‘demand[s] macro-level planning and guidance’; a second function is promulgating a legal framework for national security that embraces military, economic, foreign policy, technology, intelligence and other considerations; the third task is defining and adopting national security policies, focusing on terrorism, sovereignty, maritime, space and cyber concerns; and, finally, there is the task of addressing specific national security threats and incidents, the most worrisome of which involve Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as the special case of Hong Kong. Beijing believes that incidents in these places have ‘profound connections to international actors, so relying on only a few powerful domestic organs is not enough. Intelligence and foreign affairs organs should cooperate closely’.36

Despite pervasive wariness about international influences, some Chinese scholars (as well as the 23 January 2015 Politburo statement) also argue the need for the NSC to engage in international security cooperation to address terrorism and other non-traditional security threats, but the extent to which the NSC will do this remains unclear.37 One presumes that developments in Hong Kong in the fall of 2014 only reinforced the belief that the external environment was turning more predatory towards China's interests, as did the unrest in Xinjiang and the bloody violence perpetrated there and in other areas of China, in part, by Uighur elements. Beijing believes that it can no longer tolerate the lack of coordination among ‘different organs’ having ‘separate responsibilities when responding to major national security incidents’.38

As to the membership and organization of the NSC to date, little is known abroad, or for that matter outside a presumably small circle in the PRC. As of this writing, no comprehensive list of NSC officials has been formally released, except to acknowledge that Xi Jinping chairs the body and that Premier Li Keqiang and Standing Committee of the Politburo Member Zhang Dejiang play important roles (presumably along with Meng Jianzhu who was instrumental in setting up the Commission). According to PRC National Defense University Professor Gong Fangbin and China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations researcher Li Wei, the Commission can be expected to include leaders from such related agencies as: the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, and the National Development and Reform Commission (Fagaiwei).39 Early indications were that there are four tiers in the Commission: president, deputies, standing committee members and members.40 Leaders of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and its four headquarters (General Staff, Political Work, Logistics and Armaments), the Central Discipline and Inspection Commission [Wang Qishan], and the Ministries of National Defense, Public Security and State Security are reported to be among the members.41 Experts from some related agencies and departments may constitute members as well.

Challenges facing the NSC and the foreign and national security policy-making process

Despite limited officially-released information about the NSC at this time, in a recent set of discussions with Chinese military personnel and national security scholars in late 2014, a visiting American group and this author did get a sense of some of the details of the system and its operation and the challenges that the young NSC currently faces. The bottom line of what follows is that this policy-making system still is in considerable confusion/flux, with one interlocutor saying: ‘In our case, we raise the same question: “Who's in charge?”’42 Another senior Chinese interlocutor explained:

The NSC, to tell you the truth, is newly formed. Institutionally it is still taking shape; the NSC is different than your NSC. But actually our terminology is different than your NSC. Part internal and part external [security is the focus]. As I understand, it is more focused on internal affairs, I believe it has met several times on internal security, but it has not yet met on foreign policy. It needs to strengthen more. So, in this regard, the function is quite different than your [the US] NSC.43

Further, the American group was told by a well-informed conference participant in Beijing that while ‘political diplomacy’ was under the purview of the NSC, other issues germane to external affairs, such as international economic issues and ‘military diplomacy’, are separately handled, presumably by entities such as the Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform or the Central Military Commission. What all these bodies have in common is that they are Party organs. As one Chinese scholar put it to the author in September 2014, ‘If you follow Xi he leads all the leading small groups, so he stresses Party power’. What this means precisely remains to be seen, but it suggests less reliance on State Council experts and more on the political personalities close to Xi within the Party.

With Xi Jinping playing a dominant role in the policy-making and coordination system, this places a premium on knowing from whom and from which organizations he takes advice and gets information. It also raises the issue of how Xi balances his divided attentions between domestic and foreign affairs—domestic issues and stability maintenance are at the pinnacle of his hierarchy of concerns, but simply looking at his international travel schedule, international meetings at home and the November 2014 Foreign Affairs Work Conference, it is clear that foreign affairs work directed at making China active on the world stage is a key component in his promotion of the ‘China Dream’.44

Interlocutors in the PRC were uncertain who, with what authority, constituted the next level down helping to advise, inform and act on behalf of Xi in this realm. In the non-transparent recesses of the Chinese system, both internal observers and foreign diplomats are unsure about from whom Xi takes advice, with some thinking that he surrounds himself with advisors he accumulated earlier in his career, persons such as Li Zhanshu,45 director of the Party General Office in Zhongnanhai (a position similar to the Chief of Staff of the US President) and Secretary of the Party Secretariat. Li Zhanshu's director post previously was held (into 2012) by the now-sacked Ling Jihua, an individual who had been close to Hu Jintao and whose scandalous family behavior contributed to his downfall.46 Li is director of the executive office of the NSC (Guoanwei). Other interviewees have mentioned Cai Qi, whose experience was mostly in local government in Fujian and Zhejiang and whom this author was told may be assisting Li Zhanshu as deputy director on the NSC side. Such individuals are not part of the traditional foreign policy elite and professional foreign and security policy advisory structure (including scholars and former ambassadors, resources upon which Jiang Zemin repeatedly drew in an earlier era). Senior Foreign Ministry officials reportedly have said they ‘Don't know who Xi relies on’.47 This author's discussions with heretofore knowledgeable PRC scholars of China's policy-making system indicate that they have these confusions and uncertainties as well.

Preliminary signs, however, point to the importance of the General Office of the Party; within it are relatively young individuals (some say numbering about 300, an unknown portion of which are on temporary assignment from other agencies) who apparently play an important role in pushing paperwork and decision documents to Xi and act as the staff of the NSC. But, this staff apparently lacks actual, regular contact up the hierarchy with Xi or with other affected bureaucracies (horizontally). This selected group began to take shape in 2014. However, it will take time for them to integrate, build the organizational structure, mission and culture, and to function effectively. At this point they are not well known beyond their own organization nor apparently do they yet exercise much sway among other bureaucracies.48 These unclear lines of authority and communication induce caution throughout the system, with individuals waiting to see how things will shake out.

That various dimensions of comprehensive national security and foreign policy fall into different bureaucratic bailiwicks below Xi raise the issue of the adequacy of the coordination of ‘coordinators’. General Secretary and President Xi Jinping is the chair of all the relevant cross-system integrators (The Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform and the Central Military Commission, as well as the NSC, not to mention the Taiwan Leading Small Group and others), which seemingly makes him the almost solo coordinator of Chinese foreign and national security policy. This conclusion was reinforced by almost every Chinese with whom the author spoke in the fall of 2014—Xi is where the buck stops on foreign and security policy making. The implication of Xi holding the reins of almost all the cross-system integrator organizations is that his leadership is less collective than in the past (particularly under Hu Jintao). As one senior foreign diplomat said of Xi, ‘[There are] not a lot of people to moderate him’.49 One of the benefits to Xi of creating an NSC that potentially coordinates internal security as well as foreign policy is that this device weakens the strength of other Standing Committee Members who heretofore had particular sway in key policy areas such as internal security—persons such as the now fallen Zhou Yongkang who exercised substantial power as head of the Political-Legal Leading Group (Zhengfawei).

All this also raises the question of whether Xi's span of control is too broad to be effectively discharged and, for better or worse, creates the reality that policy is more reflective of one person's priorities rather than a collective judgment, as seemed to be the case in the recent past. One senior informant said that the Leading Small Group on Foreign Affairs had not met since the establishment of the NSC, with there being a suggestion/assertion by a PRC military figure and another interlocutor that it may have been abolished altogether. Yet interlocutors also said that there had been no meeting of the NSC on foreign policy (as distinct from internal security, or stability maintenance) since its inception.

If the above assertions are correct, the following question arises: what is the authoritative chain of command in the Chinese foreign policy process? An American group visiting the PRC in the fall of 2014 was told that the foreign policy chain of command is from Xi Jinping, to State Councilor Yang Jiechi, to Foreign Minister Wang Yi. But, with Yang Jiechi not on the Politburo, and apparently with the Foreign Affairs Leading Group of uncertain functionality, all this raises more questions than answers. One Chinese scholar said he had ‘No idea on Yang [Jiechi], but it looks like he is not involved at all’—this appears a bit overstated, but one repeatedly hears from knowledgeable Chinese that Yang Jiechi and Li Zhanshu do not cooperate well, or at all.50 Other, foreign diplomatic observers also are unclear not only on how the Foreign Ministry system players are faring under Xi, but whether or not Xi places quite the importance on US-China relations that his three predecessors did. While in the past, the formulation (tifa) on the US-China relationship was that it was ‘the most important bilateral relationship in the world’, the formulation one now hears with increasing frequency from authoritative Chinese spokespersons is the formulation that PLA Deputy Chief of Staff General Sun Jianguo articulated for a delegation of which this author was a part in October 2014: ‘China-US relations are one of the most important bilateral relations in the world nowadays …’ [italics added].51 On the other hand, officials in the foreign affairs system reported that Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, was the only ambassador to deliver a speech at the November 2014 Foreign Affairs Work Conference, suggesting the centrality of policy toward the United States remains.

In the end, the more discussion one heard in China in the fall and winter of 2014, the less clear the analyst became about how, and how smoothly, the foreign and security policy-making and coordination system is working. Somewhat in exasperation, one Chinese interlocutor finally said, ‘The NSC handles principles and legislation. Now the Communist Party is making policy and the Party has its mechanisms and it is functioning normally’.52 That Party mechanism apparently importantly includes the General Office mentioned above, but the key point to be made is that the Party as an organization by itself has very limited capacity to implement policy; even if it wanted to extend its power beyond its normal role of policy making, it would eventually have to rely upon the relatively professionalized state implementation structure that is full of bureaucrats who may or may not have full knowledge of either the policy or the intent of the Party and who may or may not be fully invested in that policy. Not only does the Party have limited capacities, but so does Xi, with one (and only one) informant suggesting that the Chinese president apparently mentions to confidantes his exhaustion with the endless drains on his time and energies.

Possible implications for the outside world and Chinese policy

A principal implication of the above analysis is that China's NSC is a work in progress; it likely will be developing and changing substantially for the foreseeable future. While recent moves in Chinese foreign policy have been significant and broad, it also is true that there is substantial confusion over the foreign policy process in Beijing, in part generated by the creation of the NSC and in part by the stronger role of Xi and some new personalities he has brought into the picture. It is too soon to say whether this new coordination body will be an at least partial solution to the long-standing coordination problem, or simply compound that challenge. Under the new arrangement, China still has a military with a separate chain of influence straight to the top and it appears that there still are separate domains for the foreign economic, diplomatic and military aspects of policy. As one long-time PRC observer of his country's national security, Professor Shen Dingli, said: ‘Much remains to be seen as to how to organize this “authoritative and efficient” apparatus’.53

This means that outsiders may face challenges in locating a decisive foreign policy voice below Xi Jinping for a considerable period. This, in turn, suggests that cultivating Xi and interacting with him as much as possible will be key. The establishment of a frequently used channel of direct personal interaction between Xi and President Obama is an appropriate reflection of the current circumstance. Also, getting Premier Li Keqiang to the United States is worthwhile on many scores, including his apparent role in the NSC.

A second clear and related implication is that Xi has a degree of (at least nominal) control over internal security, foreign, and military policy that his predecessor Hu Jintao did not possess. The attempt to fashion a powerful coordinating body (NSC), and Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign that has focused on the internal security, energy and military realms, are part of a single picture showing where the foci of power are that Xi is seeking to bring to heel. With the removal of Zhou Yongkang, Xi hits at the domestic security and energy sectors, with links into Sichuan Province and the military as well. With his assault on Xu Caihou (former vice chair of the CMC), General Gu Junshan (former deputy director of the PLA General Logistics Department), Yang Jinshan (deputy commander of the Chengdu Military Area Command), many other general-grade officers, and Ling Jihua (formerly in the Party General Office and close to Hu Jintao), he is taking on many strongholds simultaneously, not least parts of the PLA and networks in Shanxi Province.

If Xi succeeds in bringing these disparate power centers into line, policy in these realms will be reflective of his preferences to a considerable degree. Beijing's broad spectrum of foreign policy moves made in connection with the November 2014 Foreign Policy Work Conference and the initiatives that led up to it, were impressive—something is working. If Xi succeeds, Chinese policy may be more integrated and strategic in character than when it reflected the pulling and hauling of different individuals responsible for different corners of policy. This does not mean that policy necessarily will be congenial to outsiders.

Third, precisely because Xi has gathered more bureaucratic reins in his hands, it raises the issue of his span of control and his (anyone's) ability to manage so much. In times past, one could identify authoritative, deputy-level voices (e.g. Zhou Enlai, Qian Qichen and Dai Bingguo, not to mention Zhu Rongji) that were relied upon by the senior leader. These were individuals who were understood by the world to be speaking for the top and who were relatively well known to the outside world. There is a cost to not having visible, empowered and authoritative deputies. Indeed, in this kind of circumstance, a built-in problem is that underlings resist taking initiative in implementing policy unsure of their own standing in the system and uncertain about the likely success of the effort to consolidate authority in the first instance.

Fourth, Xi does not appear as intellectually reliant upon the prior established diplomatic forces in Chinese foreign policy as were Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Jiang, coming from Shanghai, was an intellectual himself and felt comfortable and desirous of consulting with the more cosmopolitan and professional wings of the foreign policy apparatus. There seems to be some dissatisfaction in the Chinese Foreign Ministry system now that it apparently is not playing its accustomed role. The fact that there is a lack of clarity among people who should know about the role of the Leading Small Group on Foreign Affairs, that the NSC had not yet met on broader foreign policy, and that the growing staff of the NSC in the General Office seems to lack linkages upward, sideways, and downward in the system all seem to lead toward the same conclusion—Xi is the key player and not to be thought of as simply a first among equals. With the diplomats having no seat on the Politburo, and a seemingly modest role on the NSC, ‘national security’ seems to be being operationalized as ‘regime’, ‘political’ security and that uncertainty pervades the system. Further, it remains to be seen whether or not the United States has somewhat slipped as a singular foreign policy priority for Xi's Beijing—and the degree to which the United States remains a central preoccupation, the balance between seeing it as a threat and an opportunity may be shifting.

Fifth, from reading the admittedly truncated accounts of the November 2014 Foreign Affairs Work Conference and looking at Chinese foreign policy behavior in the second half of 2014 and moving into 2015, one could characterize China's posture going forward as follows: strategically, China is ambitious, but tactically it seeks to turn down the regional temperature while tightening up domestically. There is a very worrisome anti-Western drift to policy in the educational and propaganda realms.

‘Domestic stability maintenance’ is the key priority of the regime and the new NSC. In such circumstances, Beijing historically has wanted to reduce external tensions and threats to the degree possible—this certainly was Deng Xiaoping's objective, and that was the goal of Deng's two immediate successors. Lowering the temperature along China's periphery and with the United States seemed to be an important thrust of the November Work Conference. But, how one does that while simultaneously turning up the internal anti-Western rhetoric remains to be seen. Attempts to patch up relations with Vietnam and Japan, and (thus far) avoiding substantial overreaction to the late-2014 demonstrations in Hong Kong, may be signals that internal concerns trump external frustrations.54 A countervailing policy impulse, however, is that the leadership concern with public opinion, nationalism and the incendiary character of sovereignty issues all mean that being tough will coexist with a desire to pacify the periphery and the outside world. Underneath it all, Xi expressed the overall strategic intention of Chinese policy to the November Work Conference—to ‘increase the representation and say of China’.55

All this suggests that Xi still has very real incentives to maintain a constructive fabric of relations with the West, the United States in particular, and his neighborhood, even as he simultaneously must appear muscular on ‘core interests’ and tightens up politically at home. Xi is committed to a stronger China, one with an ever-larger regional and global footprint. He is pushing for a United States more respectful of what he sees as China's interests. From the vantage point of early 2015, it appears that already Xi is more dominant in Chinese foreign policy than his two predecessors, that he has domestic incentives to speak tough, be assertive on sovereignty issues, but not drive things externally toward conflict. His is a higher risk policy style than that of his predecessors and he needs an effective national security decision-making process to help navigate the treacherous waters ahead. That body does not yet exist. A fitting manner in which to conclude this interim analysis is with the words Xi Jinping delivered to the APEC CEO Summit in Bali, Indonesia in October 2013:

We will have the courage to crack the ‘hard nuts’, navigate the uncharted waters and take on the deep-rooted problems that have piled up over the years. We must not stop our pursuit of reform and opening up—not for one moment.56

Notes

^1. In the fall and winter of 2014, in two research trips to China, the author conducted interviews and less formal conversations with persons known to have access to relevant information. Those with whom the author interacted included: senior-level military, diplomatic, think-tank and university-based individuals in China. Additionally, interviews and conversations were held with non-Chinese foreign diplomats in two Western countries that deal extensively with China. Parenthetically, the level of caution and concern this author detected among Chinese citizens about what was said rekindled memories of the more constrained atmosphere of earlier eras of research in the PRC. Below, a wide variety of written Chinese-language sources have been utilized that individually reveal only small pieces of the picture but which in the aggregate begin to provide a clearer image. While each source may be of uncertain accuracy or utility, when one finds a convergence of information among official and unofficial sources from different levels and functional parts of the system, and from inside and outside China, one's confidence increases. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the research reported here is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.

^2. Liu Sha, ‘No one untouchable after downfall of Zhou Yongkang: PLA paper’, Global Times, (18 December 2014), available at: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/897362.shtml, p. 2. Trying to trace back to the original PLA Daily article of 17 December 2014, one finds a Xinhuanet piece of 17 December 2014 entitled ‘Military newspaper vows no sanctuary for corruption’ and also states the original piece's byline was under the name of Wu Zhenghua. See http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-12/17/c_133861471.htm (accessed 6 January 2015).

^3. ‘China's leadership warns of unprecedented national security risks’, Xinhua, (23 January 2015), available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-01/23/c_133942445.

^4. ‘Xi eyes more enabling international environment for China's peaceful development’, Xinhua, (30 November 2014), available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-11/30/c_133822694.htm; Alice Miller, ‘More already on the Central Committee's leading small groups’, China Leadership Monitor no. 44, (14 October 2014), available at: http://www.hoover.org/research/more-already-central-committees-leading-small-groups.

^5. Xia Xingzhen, ‘Jianguo chuqi dui zhishi fenzi sixiang gaizao di lishi biranxing’ [‘The historical necessity of politically rectifying intellectuals during the early PRC’], Hongqi Wengao [Red Flag Manuscript], (5 November 2014) (2014/21), available at: http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/1105/c143844-25979934.html (Researcher, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences).

^6. ‘Santiao dixian yingcheng gaoxiao jiaoshi zhijiao zhiben’ [‘The three bottom lines ought to be the basic principles of higher education teachers’], Guangmingwang, (31 January 2015).

^7. Miller, ‘More already on the Central Committee's leading small groups’.

^8. ‘China's leadership warns of unprecedented national security risks’, Xinhua.

^9. Linda Jakobson, China's Unpredictable Maritime Security Actors, Report, The Lowy Institute (December 2014), p. 1, available at: www.lowyinstitute.org. To cite Jakobson with respect to bureaucratic fragmentation and the challenges it represents to coherent top-down leadership is not the same as asserting that the top is incapable of pursuing a long-term vision in areas that it identifies as key, such as the South and East China seas. On this and related points, see Ryan D. Martinson, ‘Chinese maritime activism: strategy or vagary?’, The Diplomat, (18 December 2014), available at: http://thediplomat.com/2014/12/chinese-maritime-activism-strategy-or-vagary/.

^10. Lyle Morris, ‘Taming the five dragons? China consolidates its maritime law enforcement agencies’, China Brief 44(37), (28 March 2013), available at: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news] = 40661&cHash = c3c1a5a4ce04d29db680c8a092843afd#.VLPEgydrVek (accessed 27 December 2014).

^11. You Ji, ‘The PLA and diplomacy: unraveling myths about the military role in foreign policy making’, Journal of Contemporary China 23(86), (2014), pp. 236–254.

^12.Ibid.

^13. Xi Jinping, ‘Build people's armed forces that follow the Party's commands, are able to win and exemplary in conduct’, in Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), pp. 242–244.

^14. ‘Xi eyes more enabling international environment for China's peaceful development’, Xinhua.

^15. Miller, ‘More already on the Central Committee's leading small groups’.

^16. Liu Peng and Liu Zhipeng, ‘Guojia anquan weiyuanhui tizhi de guoji bijiao’ [‘International comparison of the organization of national security councils’], Jingji shehui tizhi bijiao [Comparative Economic & Social Systems] no. 3 of 173, (May 2014), pp. 88–98; Sun Chenghao, ‘Meiguo guojia anquan weiyuanhui de moshi bianqian ji xiangguan sikao’ [‘Some thoughts on the changes in the model of the US National Security Council’], Xiandai guoji guanxi [Contemporary International Relations] no. 1, (2014), pp. 28–35.

^17. Wen Wangyong, ‘Guojia anquan weiyuanhui de lishi shiming yu wanshan zhice’ [‘The historical mission and policy completion for establishing the National Security Commission’], Zhongguo Dangzheng Ganbu Luntan [Chinese Cadres Tribune], Lilun shidian [Theoretical Focus], (June 2014), p. 48; Sun Chenghao, ‘Meiguo guojia anquan weiyuanhui de moshi bianqian ji xiangguan sikao’ [‘Some thoughts on the changes in the model of the US National Security Council’], p. 35.

^18. ‘The decision of major issues concerning comprehensively deepening reforms in brief’, China Daily, (16 November 2013), available at: http://www.china.org.cn/china/third_plenary_session/2013-11/16/content_30620736.htm (accessed 11 November 2014), see point 50. See also, Communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, (12 November 2013), available at: http://www.china.org.cn/china/third_plenary_session/2014-01/15/content_31203056.htm.

^19. Yang Jiechi, ‘Innovations in China's diplomatic theory and practice under new conditions’, originally published in Qiushi [Seeking Truth], and available at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90883/8366861.html (accessed 25 October 2014).

^20. Xi Jinping, ‘Diplomacy with neighboring countries characterized by friendship, sincerity, reciprocity and inclusiveness’, in Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, p. 329.

^21. ‘Zhongguo jiang sheli guojia anquan weiyuanhui’ [‘China will establish a National Security Commission’], Ifeng News, (12 November 2013), available at: http://news.ifeng.com/mainland/special/sbjszqh/content-3/detail_2013_11/12/31186107_0.shtml.

^22. Xi Jinping, ‘A holistic view of national security’, in Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, p. 221.

^23. ‘Zhonggong zhongyang zhengzhiju yanjiu jueding zhongyang guojia anquan weiyuanhui shezhi’ [‘The Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party studied and determined to establish a central National Security Commission’], Xinhua, (24 January 2014), available at: http://www.gov.cn/ldhd/2014-01/24/content_2575011.htm.

^24. ‘China's leadership warns of unprecedented national security risks’, Xinhua.

^25. Among this author's sources is a conversation with a senior PLA military officer in late-2014.

^26. Miller, ‘More already on the Central Committee's leading small groups’.

^27. Wen Wangyong, ‘Guojia anquan weiyuanhui de lishi shiming yu wanshan zhice’ [‘The historical mission and policy completion for establishing the National Security Commission’], pp. 48–49.

^28. Didi Kirsten Tatlow, ‘China approves security law emphasizing counterespionage’, New York Times, (3 November 2014), p. A6.

^29.Ibid.

^30. Li Jing, ‘Foreign NGOs, state security focus of draft Chinese laws’, South China Morning Post, (23 December 2014), available at: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1668077/foreign-ngos-state-security-focus-draft-chinese-laws (accessed 27 December 2014).

^31. ‘Xi Jinping zhuchi guoanwei shouci huiyi, chanshu guojia anquanguan’ [‘Xi Jinping presides over the first meeting of the National Security Commission, elaborating on the concept of national security’], CCTV, (16 April 2014), available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/2014-04/16/c_126396289.htm; also see, Shannon Tiezzi, ‘China's National Security Commission holds first meeting’, The Diplomat, (16 April 2014), available at: http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/chinas-national-security-commission-holds-first-meeting/; and Xi Jinping, ‘A holistic view of national security’, p. 221.

^32.Ibid., p. 222. The security areas mentioned were (in this order): political, homeland, military, economic, cultural, social, science and technology, information, ecological, resource and nuclear.

^33. Yiqin Fu, ‘What will China's National Security Commission actually do?: the four functions of China's top national security body’, Foreign Policy, (8 May 2014), available at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/08/what-will-chinas-national-security-commission-actually-do/.

^34. Shen Dingli, ‘Framing China's national security’, China–US Focus, (23 April 2014), available at: http://www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/framing-chinas-national-security/ (accessed 24 October 2014).

^35. Yiqin Fu, ‘What will China's National Security Commission actually do?’. This is an edited and condensed version of the People's Daily article's words.

^36.Ibid.

^37. Liu Peng and Liu Zhipeng, ‘Guojia anquan weiyuanhui tizhide guoji bijiao’ [‘International comparison of the organization of national security councils’], p. 98; ‘China's leadership warns of unprecedented national security risks’, Xinhua.

^38. Yiqin Fu, ‘What will China's National Security Commission actually do?’.

^39. ‘Jiemi “Guojia Anquan Weiyuanhui”’, Beijing Bao [Beijing News], (14 November 2013), available at: http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2013-11/14/content_477925.htm?div = -1.

^40. Lilian Meng, Dui zhongyang guojia anquan weiyuanhui pinglun de pinglun [Critiques on the Comments on Central National Security Commission], (7 February 2014), available at: http://www.21ccom.net/articles/dlpl/szpl/2014/0207/article_100037.html.

^41.Ibid.

^42. David M. Lampton, Discussions with senior Beijing military and civilian persons, Fall 2014, p. 2.

^43.Ibid.

^44. David M. Lampton, Conversation with Western official, Washington, DC, October 2014, p. 2.

^45. See entry for Li Zhanshu in www.chinavitae.org.

^46. Teddy Ng, ‘Ling Jihua, former aide to China's ex-president Hu Jintao, placed under graft probe’, South China Morning Post, (22 December 2014), available at: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1667990/senior-china-official-ling-jihua-placed-under-graft-probe (accessed 27 December 2014); see also, Zhou Wei, Yu Ning, Guo Qingyuan and Luo Guoping, ‘Nephew of disgraced official Ling Jihua involved in tangled web of businesses’, Caixin Online, (24 December 2014), available at: http://english.caixin.com/2014-12-24/100767461.html (accessed 24 December 2014).

^47. David M. Lampton, Notes of meeting with Western diplomats, Beijing, October 2014, p. 1; also, David M. Lampton, Conversation with Western diplomatic official, Washington, DC, October 2014, p. 2.

^48. This source is an individual that the author does not think it is responsible to identify.

^49. David M. Lampton, Notes of meeting with Western diplomats, October 2014, Beijing, p. 1; also, David M. Lampton, Conversation with US diplomatic official, Washington, DC, 7 October 2014, p. 2.

^50. David M. Lampton, Meeting notes with Chinese scholar, 23 September 2014. It is appropriate to note that this assessment is probably overstated, inasmuch as State Councilor Yang Jiechi not only played a key role in the final stages of climate negotiations with the United States (with Secretary John Kerry) in Fall 2014, but he also played a key role in negotiating (with Japanese National Security Advisor Shotaro Yachi on 7 November 2014) the November 2014 parallel statements by Japan and China that allowed a meeting and handshake between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Abe to occur at the Beijing Leaders Meeting of APEC that same month. Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States of America, ‘Yang Jiechi meets National Security Advisor of Japan Shotaro Yachi: China and Japan reach four-point principled agreement on handling and improving bilateral relations’, (7 November 2014), available at: http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zgyw/t1208360.htm (accessed 6 January 2015).

^51. ‘Senior Chinese military official meets with US guests’, China Military Online, (31 October 2014).

^52. David M. Lampton, Meeting notes, Beijing, 29 October 2014, p. 4.

^53. Shen Dingli, ‘Framing China's national security’.

^54. ‘Yang Jiechi meets national security advisor of Japan Shotaro Yachi’; Brian Spegele and Vu Trong Khanh, ‘China, Vietnam try to repair ties after South China Sea dispute’, Wall Street Journal, (28 August 2014), available at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-vietnam-try-to-repair-ties-after-oil-rig-dispute-in-south-china-sea-1409200670.

^55. ‘Xi eyes more enabling international environment for China's development’, Xinhua. This quotes heavily from Xi's remarks to the Work Conference: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-11/30/c_133822694.htm (accessed 30 November 2014).

^56. Xi Jinping, ‘Work together for a better Asia Pacific’, in Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, p. 384.