By Yan Zeyang

The China-Mongolia "Steppe Partner-2024" joint army training was held at the end of April and will continue until late May in Dornogovi Province of Mongolia. The Chinese side participated with battalion-scale troops. In the context of increasing destabilizing factors such as frequent security risks and regional conflicts, the first joint training between the armies of the two countries is bound to further deepen strategic mutual trust and pragmatic cooperation between the two militaries and inject positive energy into regional peace and stability.

The joint actions generate deterrence, facilitating the two sides to jointly address risks and meet challenges. As global non-traditional security issues have been on the rise in recent years, various extremist, terrorist, and separatist forces in China's neighborhood have been frequently making troubles, posing a common security threat to countries in the region. Mongolia shares the longest land border with China. Therefore, the stability of China-Mongolia relations is the crucial foundation for peace and stability in the border area. However, continuous infiltration and intervention by external forces have imposed common security challenges to the two countries. If these destabilizing factors are allowed to grow, Mongolia's domestic security environment and the safety of Chinese citizens in Mongolia will face greater challenges.

The two countries have enjoyed close partnership in the field of security. The first joint army training will generate deterrence against risks in specified domains, further expand the depth and width of the security cooperation between the two sides, and vigorously construct a belt of peace and stability between the two countries, making it possible to jointly deal with all sorts of risks and challenges.

The two sides concretely implement the Global Security Initiative to actively safeguard regional security. Today, the world is changing in ways like never before, and the international community is confronted with multiple risks and challenges. Successive regional security hotspots such as the Ukraine crisis and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict keep flaring up, traditional and non-traditional security threats are intertwined, and local conflicts and turbulence occur frequently. All these pose acute challenges to regional and global security.

Against this background, the China-Mongolia joint military training has injected certainty into regional security and stability. During his visit to China in June 2023, Mongolian Prime Minister Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene expressed Mongolia's support to the Global Security Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping, and willingness to work closely with China to firmly safeguard multilateralism and jointly build a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation. On this basis, military and security cooperation between the two countries will actively implement the Global Security Initiative, jointly safeguard peace in the two countries and the region, and contribute to global peace and stability.

The two sides will strengthen all-round cooperation to make it an example for relations between neighboring countries. In November 2022, President Xi Jinping met with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh during the latter's visit to China. The two sides issued a Joint Statement on Advancing the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in the New Era between the People's Republic of China and Mongolia, stating that the two sides agree to work together to advance modernization and toward a community with a shared future featuring peaceful co-existence, mutual support and win-win cooperation, set a fine example of state-to-state relations, and make more contributions to regional and global peace, stability, development and prosperity. Under the guidance of the above consensus, the China-Mongolia joint army training will promote the in-depth development of security cooperation, further enrich the connotations of the China-Mongolia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, and elevate the relations of good-neighborliness and friendship between the two countries to a new height.

The year 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Mongolia, and the 10th anniversary of the building of China-Mongolia comprehensive strategic partnership. It is believed that under the guidance of the consensus reached by the two heads of state, China and Mongolia will take effective measures, on the basis of this joint military training, to guarantee security cooperation, promote all-round cooperation in political, economic, cultural, ecological and other fields, and set an international example for relations between neighboring countries.

(The author is from the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.)

Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.