Divergence lies in anti- Beijing roadshows in key summits
▶ NATO meet a portent of US- led alliance’s core task
US President Joe Biden is likely to continue his anti- China roadshows among US’ allies at the NATO summit and the US- EU summit, said Chinese experts after the Group of Seven ( G7) summit was held in the UK, in which multiple China- related issues like Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan and COVID- 19 origin issues were found in the joint communiqué.
Experts warned that the NATO summit on Monday may be a wind vane of how the US- led NATO will adjust under the core task of suppressing China and Russia, while in the bigger picture within the EU, the divergences between the US and EU countries are unlikely to be mended.
While French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that the G7 is not a club that is hostile to China, the spokesperson of China’s Embassy in the UK on Monday slammed the G7 communiqué for distorting facts, and intentionally smearing China. “What the world has seen at this summit is the practice of clique politics, power politics, and the artificial creation of confrontation and division,” said the spokesperson.
The confrontation seems set to continue on the larger stage of the first NATO meeting since Biden took office. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with Canadian public network CBC on Sunday that during the summit, they will strengthen policy on an “increasingly aggressive” China.
Stoltenberg said NATO will continue to build its military capabilities and employ a wide combination of different tools against “Russian aggression,” following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments on Saturday that the US- Russian ties “have deteriorated to their lowest point in recent years.”
Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, said that the series of summits has fully shown the US’ pseudo multilateralism which actually aims to counter China and Russia.
The recent uproar about the “China threat” suggests that in the coming years, NATO will adjust its functions and mechanisms around “suppressing China,” said Li, noting that the so- called challenge of China and Russia will be incorporated into NATO’s new strategic concept that is refreshed about once a decade.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO launched its strategic concept twice, once in 1999 and again in 2010, to guide its future development.
Lü Xiang, a research fellow in US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday that the G7 summit has shown signs of a decline in the US’ control over its allies, so it has to use any platform available as a stage for anti- China rhetoric, like the NATO summit.
NATO head Stoltenberg’s comments cannot represent the voice of Europe, but the voice of the US, an old- fashioned anti- China rhetoric, Lü said.
EU countries, different from the US- led G7 and NATO, have their own interests in China, and they want to have an independent position, which is difficult to reconcile with the interests of the US, Lü said, noting the future will only see them increasingly conflicted.