Hyping up China threat is completely futile
Beijing yesterday slammed Nato over a "completely futile" warning in which the group said for the first time in a guiding blueprint that China's power challenges the military alliance.
The response came after Nato's strategic concept, published at a summit in Madrid, said Beijing's stated ambitions and coercive policies challenged its interests, security and values. Nato also said that China's closer ties to Russia went against Western interests, drawing a fiery response from Beijing.
"Nato's so-called new strategic concept document disregards facts, confuses black and white... (and) smears China's foreign policy," foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said yesterday.
Nato, whose guiding document was updated for the first time since 2010, also accused China of targeting its members with "malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric".
Zhao hit back, saying that China did not pose "the systemic challenge imagined". Instead, he said, it was Nato that is a "systemic challenge to world peace and stability" and its "hands are stained with the blood of the world's people".
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