China pounced on Thursday NATO after publishing a document that presents it as a threat, and accused the military alliance of having “blood on his hands”.
The Atlantic Alliance, in its Strategic Concept document, which has not been revised since 2010, assured on Wednesday at its summit in Madrid that China poses a “challenge” to the “interests” and “security” of NATO countries. .
“Declared ambitions China and its coercive policies challenge our interests, our security and our values,” NATO explains in this document.
For the first time, this text mentions China, which has traditionally not been the responsibility of the Atlantic Alliance mission.
Evidence of growing concerns about China was the presence of leaders from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand at the summit for the first time.
“China is not an adversary,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insisted.
– Chinese replica –
As expected, this document was poorly received by Beijing.
“This so-called NATO Strategic Concept document ignores reality and presents the facts in reverse. It aims to … denigrate China’s foreign policy,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
“It is a mistake to stubbornly present China as a systemic challenge,” the spokesman said, expressing “China’s strong opposition” to the NATO document.
NATO condemns, in particular, the “strengthening of the strategic alliance” between Beijing and Moscow and “their attempts (…) to destabilize the rules-based international order.”
Western powers have repeatedly warned Beijing against any support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, which China has not condemned.
In turn, China regularly denounced NATO as a hostile military organization serving Washington’s interests.
“China is not at all the systemic challenge that NATO envisions. In fact, it is NATO that represents the real systemic challenge to world peace and stability,” spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Thursday.
“NATO claims to be a regional organization and is defensive in nature. In fact, it does not stop expanding beyond its regional boundaries and its competences, provoking wars and killing civilians,” he added.
“NATO’s hands are stained with the blood of the peoples of the world,” he stressed, referring to the Alliance’s interventions in Afghanistan, Libya, or the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia.
This latest event, which resulted in the deaths of three Chinese journalists, tarnished NATO’s reputation in the Asian country for a long time.
(AFP)
Source: RPP
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