Prof. Zha Daojiong (Peking University)

The concept of nontraditional security gained popularity in Chinese deliberations about world affairs and the country’s external environment in the mid-1990s. It has since penetrated Chinese thinking and gained prominent in official declarations on the country’s challenges both domestic and international. In both China and Europe there is widespread recognition of the need to incorporate nontraditional aspects of security into the wider framework of security.
This talk begins by giving a brief contour of nontraditional security in China’s handling of international relations, particularly with its Asian neighbors. It then reviews some of the structural issues in global public health (as seen from a Chinese perspective) and contemplates promises and pitfalls in treating health as a nontraditional security in cross-national and cross-continental contexts.