China’s president creates security council, similar to U.S. model

Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/Department of Defense

Chinese President Xi Jinping will establish a new
national security commission to help advise him on both foreign and domestic issues,
Xinhua News reported. The new commission will also be the main body for advising
China’s president on foreign policy and issues in national security.

“I think this is huge. They’ve been talking about this forever and Xi Jinping has gone and done it in his first year in office,” Christopher Johnson, a senior advisor at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and former CIA analyst, told The Wall Street Journal. “He’s showing that he controls all the levers of power.”

The announcement, made by President Xi at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, demonstrates an increasing focus of China’s government leaders on international affairs. The new commission will face many foreign policy issues in the months and years ahead, including China’s fragile relationship with North Korea, tensions with Taiwan, and China’s territorial and resource disputes with its neighbors in Vietnam and the Philippines.

The commission will also wrestle the continued unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as the implications for Central Asia when the U.S. is scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

The announcement of Xi’s reorganization of his foreign policy advising could also be in response to the recent car bombing in Tiananmen Square, Christian Science Monitor reports:

Analysts say China has long planned to establish such a body to respond to both domestic and international security issues, from border and territory disputes to attacks like the recent car bomb at Tiananmen Square. How far its reach will extend into surveillance and boosting China’s already heavy domestic security controls remains the great unknown.

After World War II, President Truman reorganized the White House by signing into law the National Security Act of 1947. It created the Department of Defense out of the former Department of War, the U.S. Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency. The act also expanded the Executive Office of the President, adding powerful positions for foreign policy advisors in the White House staff. The creation of the U.S. National Security Council prepared the office of the American presidency to take a leading role in international politics and security issues.

How the commission will function and whether this is a sign of China’s intentions to have a higher profile on the international stage or if this is a consolidation of power in Xi’s own government is unclear.

H/T Andrew Swab