The 2015 defence white paper marked a foundational shift in PLA strategy by explicitly authorising a broader international security role. Its central theme, safeguarding China’s maritime rights and interests, elevated maritime power from a supporting function to a strategic priority. Most significantly, it introduced a new strategic task: safeguarding the security of China’s overseas interests, formally legitimising overseas operations in support of trade, citizens, and projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative.

The document directed the PLA Navy to move from “offshore waters defence” toward a combination of offshore defence and “open seas protection,” signalling ambition for a blue-water navy capable of sustained global operations. It also called for expanded participation in international security cooperation, UN peacekeeping, and deeper military relationships across regions. This paper provided the intellectual and operational foundation for China’s expanding naval deployments, overseas logistics, and growing defence engagement footprint.

The 2019 defence white paper is a comprehensive document that explicitly ties PLA modernisation to intensifying strategic competition with the United States. Unlike earlier white papers that focused on China’s “peaceful development,” this document detailed real capabilities, operational readiness, and warfighting preparation, especially in the Western Pacific and South China Sea. It also framed overseas instability, terrorism, piracy, and threats to sea lines of communication as direct security challenges to China.

The white paper normalised the PLA’s global role. It openly discussed building “far seas forces,” developing overseas logistical facilities, and conducting operations such as evacuations, vessel protection, and maritime rights enforcement. It also highlighted the scale of China’s expanding defence diplomacy, including military exchanges with over 150 countries. Normatively, the paper linked China’s military development to the creation of a “community of common destiny” and called for a more “inclusive” security architecture. This marked the PLA’s transition from a force preparing for global contingencies to one actively shaping international security environments.

Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) offers a new vision for global security. It opposes alliances and sanctions and argues respect for sovereignty and non-interference. Its appeal, particularly to the Global South, lies in its focus on regime stability, non-traditional threats, and development-linked security.

The GSI effectively rebrands China’s existing overseas defence and security activities. It provides a unified narrative for military diplomacy, policing cooperation, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement engagement. At the same time it expands the definition of security to reflect Beijing's priorities at home, encompassing economics, technology, data, and overseas interests.

While presented as inclusive and cooperative, the GSI is a power play that implicitly privileges China’s interpretation of “legitimate security interests,” positioning Beijing as both security provider and normative competitor to US-led frameworks.

The 2025 white paper represents the most comprehensive articulation of China’s security vision to date. Unlike the military-focused 2019 document, it adopts a holistic approach, integrating political control, economic resilience, technology, culture, and overseas interests into a single, party-led security system. The PLA is no longer treated as a standalone institution but as one component of a broader national security architecture.

It frames global instability, hegemonism, and “Cold War mentality” as systemic threats while positioning China’s rise as historically inevitable and stabilising. It extends security concerns into new domains, including outer space, polar regions, deep sea, and emerging technologies. Targeted at both domestic and international audiences, the document calls on other states to align with China’s vision of order, reinforcing Beijing’s intent to lead, shape norms, and place its interests at the centre of international security arrangements.