'Cultural threats' among five focuses of new national security panel, colonel says

China's new national security committee will target five types of "unconventional security threats", including extremist forces and ideological challenges to the culture posed by Western nations, a senior colonel has said.

Gong Fangbin said existing government agencies were not well equipped to handle the new "highly intertwined and complicated" security threats.

The other areas of concern were cybersecurity, which includes calls made on the internet for protests against the government, ideological struggle and a combination of conventional and unconventional threats.

"No single agency can handle such threats," Gong said in an article for the Study Times, the daily newspaper of the Communist Party's Central Party School. "It is necessary to set up a high-level agency that has the proper authority to co-ordinate all forces involved."

The establishment of the committee was announced after the party's third plenum in November, but no details about its structure or role were given.

Gong, also a professor at the National Defence University, said ideological challenges had grown. The West was imposing its values on the world, which made it difficult for China to protect its interests. Hollywood movies for example were changing the thinking and values of the nation's youth, he said.

The committee would also need to address threats posed by the internet. Online communities were being used to organise massive anti-government protests elsewhere in the world, putting governments at risk.