The foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, on Tuesday accused NATO of hypocrisy, noting that the alliance’s collective military spending far outpaced China’s. He also criticized NATO members’ role in wars from Iraq to Syria. “NATO’s history is full of notorious misdeeds,” he said.
He and others also cited what was perhaps the lowest point in China’s relations with the West before now: the NATO airstrike in 1999 that badly damaged the Chinese embassy in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, during the war over Kosovo. The United States said the bombing, which killed three, was a tragic mistake.
“China will not present ‘systemic challenges’ to anyone,” China’s mission to the European Union in Brussels said in a statement, posted on Weibo, a popular social media site, “but if someone wants to pose ‘systemic challenges’ to us, we will not remain indifferent.”
China’s protests ignore or underestimate the impact the country’s actions have had on its standing, which has plummeted in many countries in recent years, including those that are NATO members.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/world/asia/china-nato-military.html
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