Figuring out what this body will do is a good question:
China’s complex bureaucracy has presented China-watchers with a new analytical challenge in the form of a National Security Commission, which appears intended to help President Xi Jinping consolidate power and enhance administration but which otherwise remains something of a mystery.
But I don't think this frame of reference is right:
The key question hovering over commission has been whether it will focus more on domestic policing or on national security in the foreign policy sense of the term. Most indications suggest that it will concern itself mostly, though not exclusively, with internal security.
China is not America. Foreign policy does not stop at the water's edge in China. No, everything is about politics in China--in particular the continued absolute control of China by the Chinese Communist Party.
Trying to determine whether the new NSC will focus on domestic or foreign policy is projecting a Western governmental model of separate domestic and foreign policies on to what is simply a Chinese communist model of how internal security is protected:
The Chinese Communist Party is setting up a committee to address all threats to party control of China. This blending of domestic and foreign threats is dangerous.
As I've noted, defense of the Chinese Communist Party is the Chinese military's primary job. The primacy of party over nation is clearest when you note that Russia's communists gave up large amounts of Russian territory to Germany in 1918 in order to preserve the new Bolshevik government. ...
Already, we see China trying to make the South China Sea disputes an internal matter rather than an international matter.
This makes me nervous. If all events whether in Peking, Tibet, or abroad are viewed as a continuum of threats to the Chinese Communist Party, what might the Chinese do abroad if the threats to party control are something we might see as just an internal matter and nothing for us to worry about?
And remember that China has long viewed Taiwan as an internal matter rather than an international issue. Will all issues now be a potential spark for war?
The focus of this new body is clearly the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party and the consolidation of Xi Jinping's power over the party. Some threats to party control may be more equal than others, but they are all threats whether they come from Chinese or foreigners.
There is no water's edge when it comes to this ultimate core interest.
