RMG Perera 
China is a threat to world security and international peace. (Image credits: The Hill / youtube)
At the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium has ruled that China is a threat to world security and international peace.
Accordingly, NATO leaders are of the view that China’s increasing power should be addressed immediately.
Until last year, the 30-member NATO bloc focused on Russia.
But as the final communication at the 2021 NATO summit, they identify China as the latest threat to world security.
“China’s expectations and actions are systematically challenging international peace,” it said.
Accordingly, they call on the new American administration to pay more attention to this.
They also focus on Xinjiang’s attitude towards Uyghur Muslims, their efforts to improve nuclear weapons, and their “increasing transparency and tendency to misinterpret information.”
Critics also point out that the language used by NATO in its conclusions about China is more powerful than that used at the recent G7 summit in Cornwall, UK. Accordingly, their view is that the impact of Beijing’s growing economic and military power on democracies should not be underestimated.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also noted that China is set to become the world’s largest economy, with the world’s second-largest defence budget and the largest navy.
NATO, which emerged with the outbreak of the Cold War in 1949, had, until recently, turned its main focus to the Soviet Union and Russia, and for the first time to China.
