China’s National Security Reimagined In A Multipolar World: The 2025 White Paper In Perspective – Analysis
The 2025 White Paper China’s National Security in the New Eraappears to be a major turn in how the People’s Republic of China envisions its security matrix. Released by the State Council Information Office on 12 May 2025, this document outlines a sweeping redefinition of national security. Moving far beyond the traditional confines of military defence, the White Paper introduces an expansive framework that includes politics, economics, technology, cyberspace, culture, outer space, the polar regions, and even artificial intelligence. Under the overarching concept of ‘overall national security,’ China places security at the core of governance, linking it strategically to development, public welfare, and international legitimacy.
This reorientation is not merely an administrative or rhetorical exercise. It indicates a major transformation in how China understands its vulnerabilities and ambitions in a world of spiralling geopolitical rivalry and technological disruption. While earlier defence strategies, such as the 2015 and 2019 White Papers, were largely focused on military modernization, regional deterrence, and sovereignty claims, the 2025 iteration constructs security as a totalizing category that transcends borders, sectors, and social domains. The very act of expanding national security into such an expansive range of issue areas reflects what some scholars might call a ‘hyper-securitization’ of governance, where nearly every policy concern – from algorithmic bias to ecological degradation – becomes a matter of state survival and regime legitimacy.
Critically, this shift raises important questions. Does the sweeping scope of the White Paper dilute the conceptual clarity of security, or does it reflect a necessary adaptation to the complexity of contemporary global risks? On the one hand, the move toward a holistic framework goes with global trends, where pandemics, cyberattacks, and supply chain disruptions have blurred the boundaries between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ security. On the other, such an all-encompassing approach risks enabling an expansive state apparatus with few guardrails, potentially justifying intrusive surveillance, techno-authoritarian regulation, and suppression of dissent in the name of national stability.
Moreover, by institutionalizing this broad conception of security within the Party-state apparatus, China appears to be developing a form of systemic flexibility that is both responsive and preemptive. Yet, this flexibility may be as much about ideological control and social management as it is about genuine risk mitigation. The inclusion of polar regions and outer space within China’s security calculus, for instance, is not merely about scientific exploration or environmental stewardship. It is also a strategic positioning for global influence and resource competition in ungoverned spaces.
In this sense, the White Paper reflects a dual imperative – to adapt to the realities of a multipolar, technologically volatile world, and to consolidate internal authority through the securitization of nearly every aspect of life. Whether this will lead to greater global cooperation or deeper contestation remains to be seen, but what is clear is that China’s national security doctrine has evolved into a dense and far-reaching system of governance that transcends conventional boundaries, and this transformation carries both opportunities and profound risks.
Shifting from Traditional to Holistic Security
Unlike earlier national security and defence strategies that prioritized sovereignty, military modernization, and regional territorial interests, the 2025 White Paper demonstrates a significant departure in tone and scope. It proposes a “people-centred” and “development-oriented” model of security. The framework places people’s safety as its purpose, political security as its foundation, and economic security as its basis. This triadic architecture is then expanded to include cultural, societal, ecological, technological, and international security domains, thus operationalizing a broad, dynamic understanding of national resilience.
One of the most remarkable innovations is the foregrounding of emerging domains – artificial intelligence, biotechnology, data governance, cyber infrastructure, and polar regions. China pledges not only to govern these areas responsibly at home through legislation and institutional modernization but also to lead in shaping international norms, particularly in cyberspace, AI ethics, and global data flows. The White Paper explicitly highlights the need for rapid-response systems and anticipatory legal frameworks to regulate risks in these volatile domains.
Is the Framework Ideology-Free?
Despite its technocratic tone, the White Paper is not ideologically neutral. It is anchored in the vocabulary of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and consistently reiterates the absolute leadership of the Communist Party. However, the ideological references are increasingly set in a discourse of pragmatic governance, flexibility, and international cooperation. This fusion suggests a strategic effort to harmonize China’s internal control priorities with its global engagement goals. It also demonstrates discursive adaptability, particularly in adopting terminologies of inclusivity, people-centred governance, and cooperative security.
Economic and Social Security
The White Paper comes at a moment of visible economic headwinds. Even before a full-scale trade war could reescalate under Trump’s new tariff policies, China’s economy was grappling with slowed growth, systemic financial risks, and volatile real estate markets. In fact, data from 2024 indicated a deceleration in GDP growth to below 5%, marking one of the weakest economic performances in decades. Major property developers continued to default, and local governments struggled with ballooning debt burdens, prompting renewed regulatory interventions and fiscal consolidation.
The White Paper acknowledges these risks, fitting them into its broader national security narrative. Financial stability, debt management, food and energy security, and technological self-reliance are presented as non-negotiable pillars of national security. The document outlines efforts to safeguard key economic functions through internal circulation, industrial upgrading, and decoupling from external vulnerabilities. It reaffirms China’s commitment to grain output, reportedly over 700 million tons in 2024, alongside investments in renewable energy and strategic reserves. Simultaneously, core technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-end chips, and quantum computing are prioritized as part of an innovation-driven security infrastructure.
On the social front, the document affirms that public health, ecological well-being, and social stability are essential components of national security. The state highlights achievements such as a historically low homicide rate (0.44 per 100,000 in 2024), citing data from the Ministry of Public Security source, alongside improvements in public health systems and emergency response capacity. Average life expectancy reached 79 years in 2024, attributed to expanded healthcare access, epidemic preparedness, and anti-poverty programs.
Environmental security is another cornerstone. The White Paper reports a 36% decline in PM2.5 concentration levels since 2015 and emphasizes continued enforcement of air, water, and soil pollution control measures. Forest coverage exceeded 25% nationwide, and public satisfaction with environmental governance was said to exceed 91%, according to government surveys.
Together, these indicators are used to justify the claim that China’s security model delivers not just protection from threats, but also tangible improvements in quality of life, linking development and well-being directly to the legitimacy and strength of the state’s security apparatus.
Impact of Global Uncertainty and U.S. Trade Policy
The Trump administration’s reversion to aggressive tariffs and decoupling strategies is named, though indirectly, as a significant destabilizing factor. The White Paper warns against “unilateral sanctions,” “long-arm jurisdiction,” and “hegemonic bullying,” positioning China as a stabilizing force committed to multilateralism and common development. Even if future negotiations lead to temporary stabilization, the White Paper makes clear that China is now pursuing structural flexibility. This includes reducing dependency on global value chains controlled by the West and creating safeguards through technological independence, diversified energy sources, and secure financial infrastructure.
From Military Deterrence to Development-Security Nexus
Perhaps most significantly, the White Paper reflects a conceptual association with Western-origin paradigms like the UNDP’s human security framework and the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory. In line with the Copenhagen School, the WP extends the scope of securitization from military to societal, economic, technological, and ecological fields. It treats security as a dynamic and performative concept that evolves with social transformations, recognizing that risks to national stability increasingly emanate from internal vulnerabilities and non-traditional domains. Likewise, it echoes the UNDP’s development-security nexus by putting human welfare, environmental sustainability, and social justice within the national security agenda. The emphasis on people’s well-being – “freedom from fear and want” – closely reflects the human security discourse popularized since the 1990s.
However, while the vocabulary is cosmopolitan, the application remains decidedly statist. China’s adaptation of these global paradigms is strategic rather than transformative. The White Paper’s expansive scope offers the state considerable leeway to define and manage what constitutes a security threat. Issues such as public dissent, online expression, or cultural autonomy may be categorized as security risks, thereby legitimizing extensive state intervention. This marks a fundamental divergence from the UNDP and Copenhagen School, both of which frame security as protective of individuals rather than regimes.
Furthermore, the incorporation of these ideas appears to serve two interlinked functions – enhancing China’s global credibility as a responsible security actor, while simultaneously consolidating domestic control through legal, technological, and ideological means. The invocation of common and cooperative security, for example, goes well with multilateral diplomatic norms, yet is often deployed to critique Western alliances and justify China’s alternative governance models. Similarly, ecological security and AI ethics are framed in universalist terms, but they also enable tighter regulation of civil society and surveillance under the guise of national protection.
Thus, the shift from traditional military deterrence to a development-security nexus reflects both an adaptation to global risks and a reengineering of ideological tools to reinforce regime legitimacy. China’s model, while borrowing the form of liberal and post-Westphalian security concepts, ultimately recasts them within a framework of centralized authority and strategic autonomy. It is less an ideological convergence than a tactical incorporation, indicating China’s desire not only to participate in global security governance, but to redefine its terms.
China as Security Architect or Security Fortress?
The 2025 White Paper is not merely a reconstitution. It is a deliberate attempt to rewire the project of national and international security around China’s terms. It casts China as both enforcer and reformer – preserving domestic hierarchy while recoding global norms to suit its expanding ambitions, particularly in the Global South. Ideological orthodoxy is not discarded but reengineered, fit into the fabric of cyber law, public health, AI ethics, and trade policy. The document doesn’t complement competing interests so much as conflate them, where development becomes a pretext for control, and cooperation a framework for leverage.
In a world destabilized by trade wars, tech bifurcation, and ecological breakdown, China’s model is both a mirror and a provocation. It offers a state-driven, tightly managed vision of flexibility that appeals to regimes wary of Western conditionality – yet it also sharpens the contradictions between sovereignty and openness, stability and dissent. Its significance lies not in imitating liberal security doctrines but in systematically undercutting their assumptions. If global security governance is shifting, the White Paper ensures China won’t just adapt to the change – but it intends to dictate its direction.