Upholding the overall concept of national security is an important part of Xi Jinping’s thought
on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era. The report of the 19th National Congress of the
Communist Party of China emphasizes that it is a major principle for the party to govern the country
to balance development and security, to strengthen the sense of urgency and to be alert to dangers in
times of peace. Among them, it puts forward the demand of perfecting the National Security System
and strengthening the guarantee of national security by law. Since the founding ceremony of the
People’s Republic of China in 1949, the construction of the rule of law in China’s national security has
gone through two stages: The period of legal construction focusing on the traditional national security
and the period of legal modernization in the new era. The first stage can be divided into the initial
stage and the advanced stage of legal construction based on the traditional concept of national security.
In the process, it has formed the development track from national security legal system construction
to national security legal system construction, from scattered national security guiding ideology to
systematic overall national security view, from actively safeguarding national security to actively
shaping national security, from attaching importance to one’s own security to attaching importance to
common security.