CLSC Dialogues – Ep 30 – COL Kyle Marcrum and Sheena Chestnut Greitens – China’s Community of Common Destiny and the Global Initiatives

Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, visiting faculty at the China Landpower Studies Center at the US Army War College and an associate professor at the University of Texas—Austin, joins the CLSC Dialogues to discuss the People’s Republic of China’s four Global Initiatives and her recent publication on China’s mobilizational initiatives. Keywords: China, Global Initiatives, Community of Common Destiny

COL Kyle Marcrum Welcome to the CLSC Dialogues, a production of the China Landpower Studies Center at the US Army War College. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or the Department of War. I’m Colonel Kyle Marcrum, the Director of Global Research here at the US Army War College, and your host for today’s conversation. Today I’m joined virtually by Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, visiting faculty at the China Landpower Studies Center at the US Army War College. She is concurrently an associate professor at the University of Texas—Austin, where she directs UT’s Asia Policy Program and serves as editor in chief of the Texas National Security Review. Dr. Chestnut Greitens research focuses on China’s internal security and foreign policy. She is the author of two books and is currently writing a book on how the prioritization of regime security shapes China’s grand strategy. Sheena, thank you for joining us today. Sheena Chestnut Greitens Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. Marcrum So, you write a lot about China’s global initiatives, and I was wondering if you could describe these global initiatives for us and what China’s goals are for these initiatives. Chestnut Greitens Yeah. So, these global initiatives are something that Xi Jinping started announcing in the first half of the 2020s. And he has four major initiatives. That’s how Chinese scholars and Chinese state media refer to them. The first one he announced was the Global Development Initiative. That was followed by the Global Security Initiative, which is the one that I’ve focused most on a little over a year later. That was followed by a Global Civilizational Initiative, and then finally the Global Governance Initiative, which was announced last fall during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in China itself. And these four initiatives form part of what Xi Jinping has talked about for several years as a phrase that’s translated as “community of common destiny” or “community of a shared future for mankind”. There are a couple different ways of translating the Chinese phrase, but this is really, I think the best way to describe it is Xi Jinping’s vision for global order. The initiatives have been described as strategic, the strategic guidance for implementing that vision and turning it into a reality. So, it’s really about the wiring of the international system, about global governance, but just about how global politics is organized and to make it compatible with China’s vision and China’s priorities. So, in the case of the Global Security Initiative—maybe it’s helpful to give an example for one of these for your listeners—The Global Security Initiative is both the security pillar of the Community of Common Destiny, and Chinese scholars tell us it’s also the external projection of Xi Jinping’s comprehensive national security concept, which is this thing he announced in 2014. It’s his concept of how to make the Communist Party secure and safe in power at the top of China’s socialist system. So, it is a regime security concept, and the Global Security Initiative is the external projection of that. And Chinese scholars, sources, white papers are really clear that that’s what the Global Security Initiative is and what it’s doing for China’s national security strategy. Marcrum Maybe we can zoom out a little bit here and kind of start with the basics on it. You mentioned the Community of Common Destiny, and as the editor in chief of the Texas Nationa