How the Lianyungang Forum Packages China’s Public-Security Diplomacy

The international spotlight typically falls on the Beijing Xiangshan Forum, China’s flagship defence diplomacy platform, but a recent gathering in Jiangsu province offers significant, if less prominent, insights into the country’s expanding role in global security governance. Held on 8–10 September, the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum showcased the whole package of China’s public-security cooperation to the world: its norms and benchmarks for domestic security governance; networks and relationships cultivated through ministerial exchanges, police training and professional education; and associated Chinese technologies and equipment.

First convened in 2015 as the Lianyungang Forum at the initiative of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), it was revamped and renamed the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum in 2022 and designated as a platform to implement President Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative. Its reach is particularly strong across the Global South. Southeast Asian participation, for example, expanded from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in 2022 to all 11 countries by 2025. The 2026 gathering drew over 2,100 participants from 139 countries, regions and international organisations. Its expanding programme of sub-forums brings together home affairs and public security ministers, police chiefs, law-enforcement officials, experts and practitioners across the areas of counterterrorism, cybersecurity, drug control, migration, transnational crime and public security technology.

China’s projection of its approach to public-security governance can be discerned from the Global Public Security (GPS) Index, developed under the Forum’s auspices. The Index assesses public security across the metrics of public order and safety, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, road-traffic safety and social stability — dimensions that privilege the state’s capacity to maintain domestic order. China got the highest overall scores in all three editions since 2024, while the US ranked at the bottom in the 2024 edition; subsequent editions did not report US scores.

The pattern among the GPS Index’s high performers is also revealing. In 2026, China scored 84.62, alongside Singapore (84.42), Uzbekistan (83.81), Belarus (82.24), Turkmenistan (82.20), Saudi Arabia (80.99) and Kazakhstan (80.39), while Vietnam was among the 20 strong performers. Liberal democracies such as Germany, Norway, New Zealand and South Korea made the top 20, showing that the GPS Index recognises various regime types, while giving prominence to countries that share China’s emphasis on state authority, stability and public order.

The GPS Index thus serves as an instrument for validating China’s state-centric approach to public-security governance while challenging liberal notions of what constitutes good governance. Rather than measuring governance against the benchmarks of political rights and civil liberties, it prioritises state capacity to deliver order, stability and security. This provides a framework in which strongly state-centric approaches can register as high-performing on their own terms. China is thus not simply promoting its own record but advancing an alternative set of benchmarks through which its model of domestic governance and those of like-minded partners can be validated.

China’s channels for norm diffusion extend beyond the main forum. Foreign police professionals participate in dedicated sub-forums and talent development programmes, while Chinese police universities serve as hubs for training, course development, study exchanges and sustained professional contact. One study documented 863 Chinese police and internal-security training events across 138 countries between 2000 and 2025, involving at least 12,024 foreign officers. Mainland Southeast Asia featured prominently: Myanmar recorded 67 training events, followed by Laos (65), Vietnam (50), Cambodia (45) and Thailand (34).

Influence accumulates gradually, as foreign officials work closely with Chinese counterparts, train in Chinese institutions, and increasingly adopt Chinese practices and technologies.

A further instrument of relationship-building is China’s Great Wall Commemorative Medal, awarded to foreign law enforcement officials for promoting bilateral cooperation. Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sar Kheng, Myanmar’s Minister of Home Affairs Lieutenant General Yar Pyae, and Laos’ Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Security Vilay Lakhamfong were among the medal recipients.

Lianyungang also serves as a marketplace for the diffusion of Chinese public-security technologies. Its accompanying Public Security Technology and Equipment Expo showcases Chinese capabilities in criminal investigation, AI-enabled security, command and communications, and policing equipment. The 2026 Expo featured over 100 Chinese companies with technologies ranging from robots to drones, alongside product launches and procurement talks connecting Chinese suppliers with foreign buyers. The expo’s exhibition areas for “overseas security services” and “equipment-export services” further facilitated the marketing of Chinese technologies and services abroad.

The Forum is beginning to address the standards governing these technologies. Its 2026 Public Security Standardisation Cooperation Initiative remains short on publicly available detail, but points to an important complement to equipment exports. Common technical standards can improve interoperability across systems and agencies and lower barriers to adopting compatible technologies. For Chinese companies seeking overseas markets, diffusing Chinese standards alongside their products could therefore reinforce their commercial reach while deepening reliance on Chinese technological ecosystems.

Southeast Asia is already an important market for such technologies, which are increasingly embedded in domestic security systems. In Cambodia and Laos, Chinese support ranges from building physical infrastructure — including Cambodia’s new National Police headquarters and an internet network for Laos’s Ministry of Public Security — to providing CCTV, biometric screening, DNA equipment, communications monitoring and cybersecurity tools. In Myanmar, Chinese-supplied CCTV and facial-recognition systems were incorporated into “safe city” projects even before the 2021 coup. Since then, Chinese firms have reportedly supported the junta’s expanding interception, censorship and telecommunications-monitoring infrastructure, while Chinese technicians have provided cyber-surveillance training, strengthening the junta’s capacity to monitor information flows and political opposition.

Lianyungang brings together multiple elements of China’s public-security diplomacy. The Forum promotes Chinese norms of internal security governance and reinforces them through professional networks and training, while Chinese technologies provide the tools to realise them. Influence accumulates gradually, as foreign officials work closely with Chinese counterparts, train in Chinese institutions, and increasingly adopt Chinese practices and technologies. Lianyungang does not forge alliances. But it extends China’s reach into its foreign partners’ internal-security institutions, which handle political control as much as public security and rank among the most powerful arms of the state in many parts of the world, including Southeast Asia.

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