Beijing scolds Nato with reminder of Belgrade bombing
On the eve of the anniversary of the 1999 Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Beijing has again blamed the bloc’s eastward expansion for the war in Ukraine.
Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, fired the broadside at a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine on Thursday, more than two months after Russia’s invasion. Zhang repeated Beijing’s position by calling for a peaceful resolution to the war and for efforts to limit its humanitarian impact.
Zhang said that following efforts to help Ukrainians leave Mariupol, a southern city besieged by Russian forces, all parties should establish a broader and more efficient means of coordinating humanitarian efforts to ensure smooth evacuations.
“We call on the international community to strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination and work together to effectively regulate and contain the negative spillover effects of the Ukraine conflict,” he said.
Zhang urged the international community to create conditions for Russia-Ukraine negotiations. He said the two parties had “built some groundwork” from prior talks, adding that any attempt to benefit from aggravating the conflict would backfire.
He also warned that “alldimensional and indiscriminate” sanctions subjected people in all countries, especially developing countries, to higher food prices, oil prices and other hefty costs.
“Arbitrary seizure and freezing of foreign exchange reserves of other countries is tantamount to weaponising economic interdependence, which is bringing more uncertainties and perils to the world economy and international relations,” the ambassador said.
Zhang called on the global community to strengthen economic policy coordination and work together to contain the negative effects spilling over from the war in Ukraine. He said that a lesson learned from the crisis was that it was not reasonable or operable to base one country’s security on the insecurity of another.
“Nato’s repeated eastward expansion after the Cold War has not only failed to make Europe any safer, but also sowed the seeds of conflict,” he said. “Contrary to its claim to be an organisation defensive in nature, Nato has wantonly launched wars against sovereign countries, causing colossal casualties and humanitarian disasters.”
Zhang also referred to the three Chinese journalists killed and more than 20 diplomats wounded when Nato fired missiles at the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia on May 7, 1999.
The Chinese people will never forget this … atrocity, and will never allow [it] to repeat
ZHANG JUN, ENVOY TO THE U.N.
“The Chinese people will never forget this barbaric atrocity, and will never allow such history to repeat itself,” the ambassador said.
He said Nato should size up the situation and make necessary adjustments. It had been “clinging to the anachronistic doctrine of security … keen to provoke bloc confrontations and create tensions in Europe, and even the Asia-Pacific region and the wider world”, a position China firmly opposed, he added.