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The Global Public Security Cooperation Forum (Lianyungang) 2026 was held September 8-10 in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, with its opening ceremony on September 9 attended by Wang Xiaohong, a State Councilor and China's Minister of Public Security, who delivered remarks. According to official channels including China News Service and People's Daily Online, this year's forum invited more than 2,100 delegates from 139 countries, regions and international organizations, a further expansion over previous editions, under the annual theme "Uniting to Advance Public Security Governance, Injecting Stability into a Turbulent World." In his remarks, Wang said that since the 2025 forum, China has focused on practical results, efficiency, mutual trust and cooperation, and institution-building, fully implementing "five actions" and actively sharing its public-security governance achievements and experience with the international community while helping build and improve related bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms. During the forum, Wang also met with Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, saying China is willing to continue deepening practical cooperation with the UN in areas such as peacekeeping and supports the UN continuing to play a leading role in addressing global challenges.

According to the forum's schedule, this year's edition featured eight sub-forums focused on migration management cooperation, international counter-narcotics cooperation, international counterterrorism cooperation, cybersecurity, public-security technology and equipment, international police-education cooperation, tourism safety, and international security services — covering the main issues in global public-security governance today. Delegates also toured the third China Public Security Expo together, getting a firsthand look at the latest developments in security technology and police equipment from participating countries. Organizers said the sub-forums would each release outcome documents, including a Regional Migration Policy Trends Report, a Global Counterterrorism Partnership Action Plan and International Counterterrorism Cooperation Initiative (2026), a Public Security Standardization Cooperation Initiative, and an International Police Education Annual Report, aiming to provide concrete action guidance and reference frameworks for international cooperation in these fields.

Public records show the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum (Lianyungang) has, since its inaugural edition in 2022, organized more than 30 sub-forums, seminars, roundtables and other events, drawing nearly 8,000 participants from government agencies, international organizations and renowned experts and scholars worldwide, gradually developing into one of China's key multilateral cooperation platforms in the field of public-security governance. Compared with the previous edition, this year's forum showed a clear expansion in scale: the 2025 forum, held under the theme "Shaping Global Public Security Together: Uniting in Action to Address Diverse Threats," drew nearly 2,000 participants from 120 countries, regions and international organizations; this year's 2026 edition increased that to 139 countries, regions and organizations and more than 2,100 participants — growth on both metrics that suggests the platform's appeal and international recognition in public-security governance continues to rise. Reports say the 2025 forum also released an annual report on the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum (Lianyungang) as well as a Global Public Security Index Report covering 50 countries across four dimensions — public order, counterterrorism, road-traffic safety and cybersecurity — with an added AI-safety indicator; this year's forum is expected to continue the practice of releasing its own annual and index reports. The host city, Lianyungang, sits on the Jiangsu coast and was among China's first coastal cities opened to foreign trade, as well as a key node linking the maritime and overland routes of the Belt and Road Initiative; hosting this global public-security forum there is seen as reflecting both a desire to showcase the city's openness and a bid to deepen public-security cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road, while also helping Lianyungang expand its profile beyond traditional port logistics to that of a host city for international public-security governance dialogue.

Notably, several of this year's sub-forum topics — such as combating synthetic drugs, cybersecurity and tourism safety — closely track the evolution of transnational crime worldwide in recent years. In Southeast Asia, for example, telecom and online fraud targeting foreign nationals and cross-border human trafficking have become frequent, with the safety of tourists from multiple countries, including China, drawing widespread international attention at times — underscoring the real urgency of strengthening international law-enforcement cooperation to jointly combat cross-border organized crime. Analysts say this year's decision to designate "tourism safety" as a standalone sub-forum topic may not be unrelated to these regional security developments, reflecting the organizers' close attention to current global public-security hotspots. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity sub-forum also responds to the global trend of artificial intelligence being misused for telecom and online fraud, deepfakes and other emerging forms of crime, highlighting the increasingly complex intertwining of traditional crime and new technological risks — a challenge now widely shared by law-enforcement agencies around the world.

As one of the few global multilateral dialogue platforms dedicated to public security, the forum's influence has continued to grow in recent years, with this year's edition drawing participation from 139 countries, regions and international organizations, a record high. Observers note that as transnational crime constantly evolves and traditional and non-traditional security threats increasingly intertwine, the need for law-enforcement agencies and international organizations worldwide to strengthen information sharing, capacity building and joint action is growing more urgent; China's efforts in recent years to build multilateral dialogue channels through platforms such as the Lianyungang forum serve both its own strategic interest in participating in global security governance and offer the international community a new cooperative mechanism for addressing increasingly complex public-security challenges. Wang's meeting with the UN peacekeeping official during the forum is also seen as an attempt by China to link the Lianyungang platform with the global security-governance architecture under the UN framework. This year's forum concluded in Lianyungang on September 10, with outcome documents from the various sub-forums expected to be released progressively, providing reference points for the next phase of international public-security cooperation. As the forum's scale has expanded for several consecutive years and its agenda has grown increasingly detailed, whether the Lianyungang forum can evolve from a China-led regional dialogue platform into a multilateral public-security governance mechanism with broader international representation and binding force remains to be tested by the concrete outcomes of future editions.