China is to attempt to further boost its strategic diplomacy and power projection efforts as it hosts its annual security forum this week amid roiling regional tensions.
Foreign diplomats and security analysts say they expect Chinese officials would use the Beijing Xiangshan Forum to push Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) vision of the international order he outlined earlier this month, calling for unity against “hegemonism and power politics” — a swipe at the US.
About 1,800 representatives from 100 nations, including officials, military personnel and academics, are to attend the three-day event which opens tomorrow, Xinhua news agency reported.
Photo: Bloomberg
For some foreign representatives, particularly from Western and neighboring nations, the seminars and networking are a chance to glean more details on China’s evolving military modernization, as well as the opaque leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest armed force.
“We can be sure foreign participants at this year’s Xiangshan will try to extract more technical information about some of the weapon systems from their counterparts in the PLA,” said James Char, a China security acadmic at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
While China displayed for the first time a host of new arms at its Sept. 3 military parade, including hypersonic weapons, large submersible drones and a retooled long-range nuclear missile, analysts say question marks remain about whether they are operational and how effective they would be in a conflict.
More than a dozen generals — many formerly close to Xi — have been purged from the PLA over the past two years and diplomats say the event is also a chance to get a better idea of the precise command structure, particularly inside the Central Military Commission.
They say that is particularly important amid simmering tensions and disputes across East Asia, marked by PLA Navy trials of its third and most advanced aircraft carrier in the disputed South China Sea.
Most Western and allied militaries would be sending relatively low-level delegations, diplomats said.
The US would be sending the defense attache from its embassy in Beijing, a Pentagon spokesperson said.
Singaporean Minister of Defense Chan Chun Sing (陳振聲) and Malaysian Minister of Defense Mohamed Khaled Nordin would both be attending, officials in both nations confirmed.
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