Xi Jinping’s “The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation - Chinese Dream” as an Ideological Basis for the National Security of China

Abstract

The turn of Russia’s foreign policy vector to the East stimulates the better understanding of political processes and phenomena in China, which have not yet been sufficiently considered in Russian academia and political elites. Unlike the lack of a clear value-ideological basis of the national security system in Russia, China has solved this problem by including a conceptual level in the system of national security, with the concept of “The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation - Chinese Dream” at its center. This concept, developed by Xi Jinping, involves renewing the ideological foundations of China, especially the Communist Party, as the backbone of the entire state. This concept, as is customary in Chinese culture, does not negate the previous ones, but only expands and complements all the previous concepts formulated by the country’s past leaders: “Great Leap Forward”, “Reforms and Openness”, etc. The purpose of the study is to reveal the concept of “The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation - Chinese Dream” as the ideological basis of China’s national security. The methods of analysis of normative documents and discourse analysis of the Chinese leader’s speeches were applied to reveal the traditional cultural values of Chinese civilization with Confucian and Legist bias are in the center of the idea of the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation - Chinese Dream”. This concept was examined in our study through the prism of national security theory, which acquired an updated structure consisting of levels: conceptual, sectoral (spheres), institutional (forces) and resource (means). We conclude that this concept applies to all spheres of China’s national security system and is the ideological basis of this system, predetermining the paradigm of China’s development.