A sign of heightened tensions between China and the West, Beijing will follow very closely the NATO summit to be held in Vilnius on July 11 and 12. Already, the reappointment for an additional year of Jens Stoltenberg, its secretary general, is bad news for Beijing, which sees Washington’s hand in it. “The United States is more the master than the leader of NATO”, explains the Chinese newspaper GlobalTimesJuly 6, in an article titled: “The extension of [mandat du] NATO chief shows that the bloc is cracking from the inside ».
China looked favorably on the ” brain death ” (according to the expression of Emmanuel Macron) of an organization which she sometimes qualifies as “relic of the cold war” and which, in its eyes, has no longer any reason to exist since the dissolution of the military alliance resulting from the Warsaw Pact in 1991. Its awakening during the war in Ukraine worries Beijing all the more that NATO is increasingly interested in Asia.
In 2022, for the first time, as guests, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea participated together in the NATO summit held in Madrid. “We are facing systemic competition from actors, including the People’s Republic of China, who undermine our interests, our security and our values, and who seek to undermine the international order based on rules “, indicated the press release published on this occasion, in 2022.
Nervousness in Beijing
Visiting Japan and then South Korea at the end of January, Mr. Stoltenberg explained the reasons why China is now “much higher” on the NATO agenda: China’s presence in space and cyberspace, the lack of shared values, the behavior ” aggressive “ of China in the South China Sea “and in this region”the construction of long-range weapons and cooperation “increasingly narrow” with Russia. In June, it was announced that the four Indo-Pacific countries would become “partners” of NATO. Their leaders are also expected at the summit in Vilnius.
Obviously, China is hostile to this rapprochement intended to counter it. A sign of the nervousness that reigns in Beijing, Wang Yi, the number one in Chinese diplomacy, recently indulged in tendentious remarks: “Americans and Europeans are unable to distinguish Chinese from Japanese or Koreans. It doesn’t matter if we dye ourselves blonde or get our noses done, we’ll never be Westerners. We need to know where our roots are,” he said Tuesday, July 4 to Japanese and South Korean diplomats.
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