Interview: Global Security Initiative desperately needed -- scholar

NEW YORK, April 25 (Xinhua) -- The Global Security Initiative, first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping at Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) on Thursday, is desperately needed, said John Pang, a senior fellow at New York-based Bard College.

"We do need a security order that encompasses the world. We don't have such a thing right now," Pang said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The world is on a terribly dangerous path now, he said, adding that the call for a Global Security Initiative "is absolutely a breath of fresh air."

Xi proposed the Global Security Initiative to promote security for all in the world in his keynote online speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the BFA Annual Conference 2022 last week.

His speech "provides a restatement of a commitment to one world and to the faith in humanity as a community with a shared future, where all people rise and fall together," said Pang.

"We are on a train headed for a broken bridge. And it's a driverless train" with the Western leadership seeing no turning back, Pang warned.

He pointed out that the allegedly defensive order-creating security mechanisms like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and AUKUS -- the trilateral security partnership between the United States, Britain and Australia, have turned out very clearly to be offensive.

They oppose the rise of the rest of the world and are on full mobilization for wars of aggression and regime change against all threats to the centuries-old Western unipolar hegemony, he said.

The Global Security Initiative serves as an invitation to start talk about the security issue and at the very least, Asia and the rest of the non-Western world should get behind this proposal, said Pang.

Xi's speech articulated a vision for Asia and China, Pang noted, adding that it reflects China's commitment to the stability and economic dynamism of Asia and the world.

China's reform and opening up is inseparable from its role in extending stability and peace around itself and this notion of a community with a shared future is a given, Pang added.