NATO chief warns of China challenge, but denies new 'Cold War'

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has reiterated the military alliance’s persisting fear of a stronger China, insisting that although Beijing is not an enemy, the group must adjust to its rising power.

“We're not entering a new Cold War and China is not our adversary, not our enemy,” Stoltenberg said after the leaders of member nations met in Brussels on Monday for their first summit during the administration of what the alliance views as a more friendly US President Joe Biden.

“But we need to address together, as the alliance, the challenges that the rise of China poses to our security,” Stoltenberg added without elaborating. "We know that China does not share our values ... we need to respond together as an alliance," Stoltenberg also said as he arrived for the one-day summit in Brussels.

"China is coming closer to us. We see them in cyberspace, we see China in Africa, but we also see China investing heavily in our own critical infrastructure," he added, a reference to ports and telecoms networks.

According to Press TV, speaking earlier on the eve of the NATO summit on Sunday, Stoltenberg sounded a lot more hostile against Beijing, accusing it of human rights violations and insisting that leaders of the military alliance should forge a stronger common policy towards an increasingly dominant China.

"China does not share our values. We see that in the way they crack down on democratic protests in Hong Kong, how they oppress minorities like the Uyghurs" in western China, as well as how they use modern technology to monitor their population "in a way we have never seen before," Stoltenberg claimed during an interview with Canadian public network CBC.

"So all of this makes it important for NATO to develop a policy, to strengthen our policy when it comes to China," he further asserted.

He went on to emphasize that China has the second largest defense budget in the world, the biggest navy, and is investing massively in new military material, which "affects our security."

ME