Behind the Rhetoric: What is China’s Defense White Paper Really About?
China’s recently released defense white paper paints a picture of a peaceful China committed to diplomacy and non-aggression. This white paper suggests that China offers a more responsible, peaceful form of global leadership than the United States while denying its own hegemonic ambitions.
However, there’s a well-known gap between what China says in the paper and what it does. Its growing global dominance is no secret. The New Silk Road project, for example, has allowed Beijing to extend its economic and political dominance across much of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Despite its dominance and political influence in these countries China continues to propagate its image as cooperative and non-threatening global player, a narrative that doesn’t match the reality of its hegemonic ambition. Most of these countries in China’s New Silk Road project heavily depend on China, many of these governments were corrupted for China’s money and repress its own people including Cambodia, Zimbabwe and SriLanka.
Even though, China positions itself as a peace-promoting state by supporting a two-state solution and criticizing the war in Gaza, yet it continues to maintain strong bilateral ties with Israel. China has also very close military, economic and diplomatic relationship with Russia. Putin and Xi portrayed themselves as defenders of global stability during Russian war against Ukraine which clearly referring themselves as defenders against pressure from the United States and its allies. China has also supplied arms and technology to Pakistan during its recent clashes with India, using the conflict as an opportunity to test its military capabilities in preparation for future warfare. China is likely to continue providing military and economic support to North Korea in the event of an attack on South Korea or Japan, while also using North Korea’s nuclear threat to deter U.S. support for Taiwan’s independence as scholars such as Christopher S. Chivvis and Jack Keating observed.
Through its defense white paper, China is trying to reshape its image as a victim surrounded by external threats, rather than acknowledging its own aggressiveness. That’s a hard sell, especially considering its denial of 75 years colonization in East Turkistan, intensive pressure against Taiwan independence, its extensive maritime claims in the South and East China Seas, and its ongoing disputes with neighboring countries—many of which involve building artificial islands and claiming contested territories like the Senkaku Islands. Chinese coast guard vessels violated international maritime rights, entered in Philippines’s claimed exclusive economic zone several times and Malaysia and Vietnam has similar maritime concerns as well.
It is also very important to note that how China addressed on Taiwan, East Turkistan, Tibet and Hongkong issue three times in Chapters One and Three in its defense white paper. These references appear aimed at justify its colonial repression in East Turkistan and Tibet and further colonial ambition for Taiwan. In East Turkistan, the Chinese state already exercises near-total control. Independent investigations and credible international human rights organizations estimate that between one to three million Uyghurs have been detained in what the government calls “re-education camps.” Approximately 2.5 million Uyghurs have been subjected to forced labor, and nearly 900,000 Uyghur children have been separated from their families and placed in state-run boarding facilities described by many as prison-like orphanages designed for aggressive cultural assimilation, or “Sinicization.”
Nearly the entire body of Uyghur intellectuals are imprisoned. Extensive reports of forced sterilizations and mass family separations point to a deliberate effort to diminish Uyghur population and destroy family structure. Within East Turkistan, the repression is so severe that many Uyghurs describe a climate of fear where any expression of identity can cause brutal consequences which captured in a haunting phrase used locally: “If you open your eyes, I’ll take your eyes; if you speak, I’ll cut your tongue.”
Beijing understands that Uyghurs within the region has been effectively silenced. Its growing concern now lies with the global Uyghur diaspora, which continues to speak out about the atrocities. In response, Chinese authorities have escalated efforts to discredit and delegitimize these voices, portraying them as separatists manipulated by the United States and other Western powers. This tactic not only aims to undermine the credibility of Uyghur exiles but also serves to justify China’s transnational repression, such as monitoring, harassing, and even threatening Uyghurs in exile.
In addition, China continues to claim that there are no genuine independence movements in Taiwan or East Turkistan, asserting instead that these are false narratives manufactured by the West to destabilize China. This is a “Calling a deer a horse” 指鹿为马 (zhǐ lù wéi mǎ) strategy to distort the facts while fooling international audiences to accept falsehood.
In summary, China’s national security white paper can be understood as a strategically crafted document that seeks to reframe the country’s assertive actions and hegemonic ambitions as necessary measures for national defense. Historically, states engaged in expansionist or aggressive policies have often constructed narratives of external threat as a means to legitimize their behavior, mobilize domestic support, and maintain alignment among its allies. Within this context, China’s security white paper appears less oriented toward genuine defense and more as a ideological and strategic tool to create precondition for its future military aggressiveness.
By Rukiye Turdush
