Guo Chao and Wang Shengyu: Striving to Achieve a High-Quality Benign Interaction Between Development and Security
Coordinating development and security is a vital principle of our Party's governance [1], as well as an inherent requirement for comprehensively deepening reform and opening up and for advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through Chinese-path modernization. The Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese-path Modernization, adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, explicitly emphasized the need to "realize a benign interaction between high-quality development and high-level security, and effectively ensure the long-term peace and stability of the country." This has set higher requirements and provided a fundamental framework [2] for us to further understand and handle the relationship between development and security in the New Era on the new journey, and to further advance the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation.
Significant Importance
Looking across history and throughout the globe, no other political party in the world has been able to lead its people in creating the "two miracles" of rapid economic development and long-term social stability in such a short period as the Communist Party of China. There are many reasons for the emergence of these "two miracles," among which the persistent coordination of development and security is crucial. Stepping onto the new journey, whether development and security can be efficiently integrated directly affects whether the "Chinese miracle" can be sustained. Therefore, at this critical period of advancing the cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese-path modernization, to continue the struggle and create new miracles and glories, we urgently need to advance high-quality development and the construction of the new development sector [3] in an integrated manner, and safeguard the new development pattern with a new security pattern.
The Party was born for the people and thrives because of the people; the goal of the Party's century-long struggle has been to allow the people to lead a good life. Since the reform and opening up, the lives of the Chinese people have continuously improved, while they simultaneously hope for even better. The people require not only a more affluent material life and higher-quality economic development but also a more enriched spiritual life, a more superior social system, a more beautiful ecological home, and a higher-quality security environment. To meet these new expectations of the masses, it is urgent that we adhere to high-quality development as the "hard truth" [4] of the New Era and center ourselves on high-level security as the "hard task" of the New Era. We must use every means possible to pursue development while exploring every way to guarantee security. We must rely on high-quality development to lay a solid foundation for the high-quality life of the masses and shape high-level security to provide a strong guarantee for that life, ensuring that the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security is more substantial and long-lasting.
Core Essence
The so-called "benign interaction" refers to the formation of positive and proactive mutual influence between entities, where the development of one side can drive the development of the other, achieving mutual benefit and common development through interconnection and mutual promotion. Overall, the essence of the benign interaction between high-quality development and high-level security lies in using high-quality development to augment and assist the maintenance of high-level security, while using high-level security to safeguard high-quality development. Specifically, this includes the following two aspects.
Development and security are complementary. Development is the foundation of security; the stronger the momentum of development and the higher its quality, the firmer the bedrock of security and the higher the level of security will be. It can be said that high-quality development is the greatest form of security. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Development is the Party’s top priority in governing and rejuvenating the country, and the key to solving all of China’s problems." To maintain and shape national security and ensure that Chinese-path modernization makes steady and sustained progress [5], the key lies in development—promoting high-level security through high-quality development. High-quality development is development that implements the New Development Philosophy [6]. By using the New Development Philosophy as a guide, it promotes deep-level transformations in the driving forces, modes, paths, and quality of development. It is committed to development that is of higher quality, more efficient, more sustainable, and more secure, providing a more solid material basis for high-level security. High-quality development is development that shifts from "whether there is something" to "whether it is good." Through major measures such as developing new quality productive forces, optimizing economic structures, innovating science and technology, advancing common prosperity, and building a Beautiful China, it realizes socio-economic development that seeks the new amidst change, seeks progress from the new, and seeks stability from progress, providing better options and strategic support for high-level security. High-quality development is development that upholds the principle of the "people first." By continuously meeting the diverse and upgrading needs of the masses, it allows the people to live and work in peace [7] and share the fruits of development, thereby consolidating the mass base for high-level security, increasing popular consensus, and pooling the strength of the people.
Security is inseparable from development, and development is inseparable from security. Security is the prerequisite for development; "without security and stability, nothing can be discussed." It can be said that high-level security is the best kind of development, while insecurity is the worst kind of development. High-level security is security that implements the Holistic Approach to National Security [8]. By strengthening the concept of "Great Security," fighting the "Total War," and viewing security issues in different fields, periods, and links from a strategic height and holistic perspective, it comprehensively utilizes various resources and means to maintain security and stability in various fields—politics, economy, culture, society, and ecology. This ensures that high-quality development does not deviate from the correct track, that global and systemic risks do not occur, and that the support of the masses is not lost, thereby occupying the commanding heights and seizing the initiative. High-level security is security that advances the modernization of the national security system and capabilities. By improving the national security leadership system, the legal system for national security, the strategic system, and the policy system, it enhances the ability for risk monitoring, early warning, prevention, and mitigation, as well as national emergency management capabilities and security assurance capabilities in key areas. It uses an excellent national security environment, complete national security institutions, and strong national security capabilities to aggregate high-quality development resources, implement innovation-driven development, and stimulate social vitality, allowing a continuous stream of high-quality talents to emerge and display their talents with peace of mind. High-level security is security that aids high-level opening up to the outside world. By implementing a more proactive strategy of comprehensively expanding opening up and establishing and improving national security mechanisms involving foreign affairs, it creates favorable external conditions for constructing the new development pattern, developing a higher-level open economy, and promoting international cooperation and common development, ensuring that high-quality development is promoted through high-level opening up.
Strategic Measures
On the basis of clarifying the internal relationship between high-quality development and high-level security, we need strategic planning, systematic layout, and integrated advancement. Under the Party’s comprehensive leadership, we must implement comprehensive policies, exerting continuous effort and persisting over the long term to turn the beautiful vision of a benign interaction between high-quality development and high-level security into a vivid reality.
Uphold the Party's leadership and scientifically coordinate development and security. "The Party, government, military, society and education, north, south, east, west and center—the Party leads everything" [9]. Whether it is advancing high-quality development or shaping high-level security, the key lies in the Party's leadership. Unifying the planning and deployment of both also depends on the Party’s leadership. To coordinate development and security, we must effectively grasp the correct political direction, do well in top-level design, and implement major decisions. We must use the achievements of the Party's innovative theories to guide major development plans and security matters, eliminating erroneous perceptions and building a consensus on values for the coordination of development and security. We must give full play to the Party's role in overseeing the overall situation and coordinating all parties, allocating and integrating various resources, and mobilizing and organizing forces from all sides to tackle difficulties in the coordination of development and security.
Strengthen the systemic concept and dynamically balance development and security. Development and security are like the two wings of a bird or the two wheels of a cart; they are an inseparable organic whole and must be maintained in a dynamic balance and advanced in coordination. We must use perspectives of universal connection, comprehensiveness, and developmental change to gain insight into the relationship between development and security, grasping the historical laws, realistic circumstances, and future trends of giving equal weight to both. We must employ strategic and historical thinking to clarify strategic orientation, maintain strategic resolve, summarize historical experience, and learn from historical lessons around the key elements affecting development and security. With a broader vision and longer-term perspective, we should contemplate the enterprise of long-term governance and the trend of lasting peace, gaining the historical and strategic initiative in coordinating development and security. We must apply dialectical and systemic thinking to see the essence through phenomena, see the whole through the parts, and look at the long-term from the present. We should observe the general trend of development and security, plan for the overall situation of development and security, seize the vital points, and advance these two major tasks with forward-looking thinking, holistic planning, and integrated promotion.
Comprehensively deepen reform and deeply integrate development and security. Promoting development through reform and ensuring security through reform is a basic experience in scientifically handling the relationship between the two. Facing new situations and tasks, opening a new chapter where China's socio-economic development and national security advance together cannot be achieved without comprehensively deepening reform. We must simultaneously deepen reforms in development and security concepts, systems, and mechanisms, deeply embedding the Holistic Approach to National Security within the "Five-Sphere Integrated Plan" and the "Four Comprehensives" strategic layout, and implementing the "Great Security" concept in high-quality development actions. We should focus on the true, large, difficult, new, and urgent problems existing in development and security. With the spirit and means of reform, we must strive to eliminate erroneous ideological concepts regarding development and security and break down institutional barriers that hinder their integration and mutual promotion. We must conduct specialized governance of prominent problems where development and security are not linked, integrated, coordinated, or harmonious. We should create favorable conditions for policy communication, resource integration, information flow, and the connection of forces in promoting development and ensuring security, striving to realize the mutual reinforcement of the new development pattern and the new security pattern, and the benign interaction between high-quality development and high-level security.
(The authors are respectively Associate Professor and Professor at the School of Marxism, Anhui Normal University)
Source: Chinese Social Sciences Net – China Social Sciences Today