China’s Normative Balancing: Global Security Initiative and Middle East Security Architecture

This article examines China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) as a soft balancing strategy, specifically in the form of normative balancing. It employs a qualitative approach based on data collected from the official website of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as secondary sources including journal articles, newspapers and online news platforms. The study analyses the GSI as a normative balancing strategy and explores its implications for the security architecture of the Middle East using a normative balancing conceptual framework. As an effort by China to challenge the dominance of the United States through the promotion of alternative security norms, the GSI has implications for the Middle East security architecture in three key areas: first, it counters the United States’ common security rhetoric by advancing the concept of indivisible security; second, it introduces a Sino-centric perspective on regional security issues; and third, it emphasises the norm of non-interference as an alternative to the United States’ interventionist approach in the region.