Discussions at the 13th Beijing Xiangshan Forum's parallel sessions held on Wednesday had expanded from long-standing traditional issues to emerging frontier topics such as outer space security, said an expert.
With the theme "Build Consensus on Stability, Advance Security Governance Together", this year's forum opened on Tuesday and will run through Thursday, bringing together experts and scholars from about 100 countries and international organizations.
The eight parallel sessions kicked off simultaneously in the afternoon, with distinctively different topics: some focused on long-standing structural security contradictions plaguing the world, while others closely followed newly emerging variables such as outer space and new technologies. Many topics that are usually difficult to discuss in depth at public plenary sessions could be more fully explored at the sub-venues.
Speaking at the parallel sessions, prominent experts shared their insights on international relations, regional peace and problems posed by emerging technologies.
"The topics we discussed used to be mainly in traditional security fields, but now they have expanded to non-traditional security fields. The military application of AI, AI security issues and outer space security issues are all new frontier topics. These traditional and non-traditional issues are combined together, so the significance of the forum is expanding," said Luo Yuan, a senior advisor of the forum.
Topics such as maritime channel security and maritime security governance, Asian approaches to addressing security challenges, the trend toward multipolarity and the international order were hotspot topics in these session discussions. Participating representatives conducted pragmatic exchanges of views from different levels and dimensions.
"I'm very concerned about the straits and freedom of navigation, so I'll be following different subject and discussion they have been having here. It's been very interesting. I think it's a huge challenge for the whole world," said Ricardo Allende, former deputy minister of defense of Chile.
This year's forum marks the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum, which was launched in 2006 as a "track-two" think-tank exchange.
Discussions at Xiangshan Forum expanded to unconventional fields including outer space security: expert
