Climate Security in China: An Issue for Humanity Rather Than the Nation

The chapter presents how China has approached the issue of climate change in terms of security by exploring the arenas of high politics, security concepts, state bureaucracies, civil society, and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). It is based on primary sources and uses a three-fold framework that differentiates between national security, human security and ecological security. China's long-term position has been to emphasise climate as an issue of development and underline the ``common but different responsibility'' between developing and industrial nations. Over the 2010s though, China's position shifted from regarding climate change as a technical and political issue to one that also concerns security, understood in a ``holistic'' or integrated manner. Still, the understanding leans more towards the security of humanity rather than the national security of China. At the same time, ``harmony between man and nature'' has been incorporated into the canonised political line of Xi Jinping, although this is not legitimated with security. Accordingly, China has emphasised that the issue should be resolved through international cooperation rather than unitary measures.