China's Council of State Security: Evolution, Rationality and Operations

2014 ◽  
Vol 06 (02) ◽  
pp. 56-70
Author(s):  
Ji YOU

Xi Jinping's “New Deal” to restructure China's top government along the lines of power recentralisation is an endeavour to revitalise China. In full operation it will reshape Beijing's national security (NS) decision-making process, from the formulation of NS strategies, crisis management at home and abroad, coordination of NS policies and actions by Party/army/state agencies to institutional links with its foreign NS counterparts. Primarily it is Beijing's response to rising internal state security challenges.

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Vitaliy Kryvoshein

The study aims to analyse the connection among types of security intimidations: threats, challenges, vulnerabilities, and security risks, to establish the rapport between national and global threats, to review critical issues of the security environment.The study’s relevance is that the concept of security needs to be updated in the current changes in the global security context and the emergence of an increasing number and variety of threats under the transformations that are taking place. The research shows how the reconceptualization of security in the late twentieth century was influenced by global contextual changes associated with the end of the Cold War and the use of constructivist approaches in the social sciences. This dual change has led to a rethinking of security challenges in the second decade of the 21st century, leading to increased interest in this study. It is exposed that the concepts of vulnerability and risk are used not only in the context of foreign and defence policy, but also concerning ecologic security challenges caused by global environmental change, climate change and dangers and disasters, where there is no consensus within and among the community on vulnerability, and risks. In conclusion, it is proved that conceptual thinking on security threats has necessitated precise definition and consensus on these concepts, especially on practical policy measures to achieve agreed goals, and systematization of types of threats to all types of security and life support. It is determined that the degradation of traditional political institutions, against the background of the degeneration of the established international law system and order, cause the emergence of new threats to national security and, accordingly, political, as its subcategories. It is noted that modern researchers have paid little attention to studying the connection between the concepts of political security, state security and threats to state security. In the context of new globalization threats, states are facing a change in the security context and need to review security strategies and update the discourse on political and national security.


The armed forces of Europe have undergone a dramatic transformation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces provides the first comprehensive analysis of national security and defence policies, strategies, doctrines, capabilities, and military operations, as well as the alliances and partnerships of European armed forces in response to the security challenges Europe has faced since the end of the cold war. A truly cross-European comparison of the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces remains a notable blind spot in the existing literature. This Handbook aims to fill this gap with fifty-one contributions on European defence and international security from around the world. The six parts focus on: country-based assessments of the evolution of the national defence policies of Europe’s major, medium, and lesser powers since the end of the cold war; the alliances and security partnerships developed by European states to cooperate in the provision of national security; the security challenges faced by European states and their armed forces, ranging from interstate through intra-state and transnational; the national security strategies and doctrines developed in response to these challenges; the military capabilities, and the underlying defence and technological industrial base, brought to bear to support national strategies and doctrines; and, finally, the national or multilateral military operations by European armed forces. The contributions to The Handbook collectively demonstrate the fruitfulness of giving analytical precedence back to the comparative study of national defence policies and armed forces across Europe.


Author(s):  
Marco Romano ◽  
Paloma Díaz ◽  
Ignacio Aedo

AbstractIn the context of smart communities, it is essential an active and continuous collaboration between citizens, organizations and institutions. There are several cases where citizens may be asked to participate such as in public decision-making process by informing, voting or proposing projects or in crisis management by sharing precise and timely information with other citizens and emergency organizations. However, these opportunities do not automatically result in participatory practices sustained over time. Mobile technologies and social networks provide the substratum for supporting formal empowerment, but citizen engagement in participation processes is still an open issue. One of the techniques used to improve engagement is gamification based on the humans’ predisposition to games. So far, we still lack studies that can prove the advantage of gamified systems respect to non-gamified ones in civic participation context. In this work, we present a between-group design experiment performed in the wild using two mobile applications enabling civic participation, one gamified and the other not. Our results highlight that the gamified application generates a better user experience and civic engagement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Juan Wang ◽  
Yang Yu ◽  
Yi Li ◽  
Chengyang Fan ◽  
Shirong Hao

Network function virtualization (NFV) provides flexible and scalable network function for the emerging platform, such as the cloud computing, edge computing, and IoT platforms, while it faces more security challenges, such as tampering with network policies and leaking sensitive processing states, due to running in a shared open environment and lacking the protection of proprietary hardware. Currently, Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX) provides a promising way to build a secure and trusted VNF (virtual network function) by isolating VNF or sensitive data into an enclave. However, directly placing multiple VNFs in a single enclave will lose the scalability advantage of NFV. This paper combines SGX and click technology to design the virtual security function architecture based on multiple enclaves. In our design, the sensitive modules of a VNF are put into different enclaves and communicate by local attestation. The system can freely combine these modules according to user requirements, and increase the scalability of the system while protecting its running state security. In addition, we design a new hot-swapping scheme to enable the system to dynamically modify the configuration function at runtime, so that the original VNFs do not need to stop when the function of VNFs is modified. We implement an IDS (intrusion detection system) based on our architecture to verify the feasibility of our system and evaluate its performance. The results show that the overhead introduced by the system architecture is within an acceptable range.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
Božidar Forca ◽  
Dragoljub Sekulović ◽  
Igor Vukonjanski

Security is one of the most common terms in the modern world. This statement is supported by the fact that the term security is used in a wide range of areas. The subject of this paper is national security and the challenges, risks and threats to that security in contemporary international relations. The purpose of the work is twofold. First, to show the diversity of theoretical understanding of the term challenge, risk and threat by various authors. On the other hand, the overriding goal is to analyze the relationship to the challenges, risks and threats in different countries. When it comes to national security, challenges, risks and threats, most often, are identified in a document called the national security strategy. This document, as one of the highest in the hierarchy of political acts of every state, when it comes to security, is passed by almost all modern states of the world. The analysis of numerous national security strategies has revealed that it is possible to identify: 1) the challenges, risks and threats that appear in all strategies, 2) the challenges, risks and threats of security that appear in most strategies, and 3) the challenges, risks and threats of security which are country specific.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Javier Eiroa Escalada ◽  
Luis Toribio Castro

Las banderas ya no tienen finalidad táctica, pero como símbolo de la nación, representan los valores superiores expresados en la Constitución de 1978.A diferencia de las Fuerzas Armadas, donde las banderas se mantienen como parte de las tradiciones, y aportan gran brillantez a los actos militares, en la literatura española existen pocos estudios relativos a la bandera en el ámbito de las fuerzas y cuerpos de seguridad del Estado.Tras un breve repaso a la normativa vigente en el ámbito de la Vexilología, este trabajo aborda el procedimiento para la concesión del derecho de uso de la enseña Nacional a distintas unidades de las fuerzas y cuerpos de seguridad de ámbito estatal, así como sus modalidades, uso y colocación en actos oficiales, honores y protocolo.Finalmente, se analizan las peculiaridades del ceremonial en el acto de entrega de la bandera, como distinción que se otorga en reconocimiento a la labor que desarrollan como garantes de las libertades públicas y de la seguridad ciudadana, considerando la distinta naturaleza -militar y civil- de ambos cuerpos de seguridad. _________________ The flags are no longer tactical, but as a symbol of the nation, they represent the higher values expressed in the Spanish Constitution of 1978.The Army has kept flags as part of the traditions, and provide great brilliance to the military acts. Instead, in Spanish literature there are few studies about the flag in the State Security Forces.After a brief review of current legislation in Vexillology, this paper deals with the procedure for bestowal of the use the National Flag to different units of the National Security Forces, as well as their modalities, use and placement in official events, honours and protocol.Finally, we analyze the peculiarities of ceremonial in the Act of delivery of the flag, as a distinction that is given in recognition of the work they perform as guarantors of citizen freedoms and public safety, considering the different nature - military and civil- of both security Forces.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Chris I. Nwagboso

This paper examines the various internal security challenges confronting Nigeria in the 21st century. The paper adopts historical method and content analysis to investigate how the abysmal failure of the poorly formulated and ineffectively implemented National Security Policy has hitherto exacerbated internal security challenges in Nigeria. The paper further attempts a critical review of major internal security challenges hitherto confronting the country; such as the Niger Delta crises, kidnapping in the South-East geo-political zone, Jos crises, Boko Haram crises and crises by Fulani Herdsmen in the Northern part of Nigeria. The result of the analysis shows that these internal security challenges have not only been difficult to address by the National Security Policy, but have also impacted negatively on the country's desired socio-economic development in the 21st century. The paper, therefore, recommends among others, the need for a careful review of the Nigeria's National Security Policy that will not only be integrative/comprehensive in outlook, but will also take cognizance of some domestic factors that are currently responsible for internal security problems in the country; such as unemployment, inequality, poverty, fraudulent electoral process, corruption, skewed federalism, porous nature of the Nigeria’s borders, sabotage among politicalelites, bad governance, religious intolerance, citizen-settler controversies, among others.


Author(s):  
Frank Bitafir Ijon

Conducts of by-elections in recent times have been fraught with a lot of security challenges. This has been as a result of the violence that characterized the conduct of by-elections in recent times in Ghana. Violence during by-elections in Ghana plays a vital role in securing election victories for political parties. In all the by-elections characterized by violence in Ghana, they were won by parties that were accused of inciting the violence. The main tenets of election violence as identified by the paper included, actors, motives, timing, consequences, and patterns. The paper adopted the content analysis method in its investigation of the two violent by-elections in Ghana. The paper revealed that there was a correlation between violence during by-elections and victories of incumbent parties. This was because, in the two by-elections understudy, those accused of starting the violence and using national security operatives won the elections. The paper also found out that by-election violence impacted negatively on Ghana’s democratic maturity in several ways, such as; low voter turnout, weakening of democratic foundation and breeding an atmosphere of insecurity. Finally, the paper also revealed that political parties especially those in government resort to violence during by-elections in Ghana because they fear losing it will mean the government was underperforming as argued out by Feigert and Norris and also because they want to add to their tally in parliament.


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