Photo/Illutration NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks with the media as he arrives for a NATO summit at NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 14. (AP Photo)

BRUSSELS--NATO leaders are expected to brand China a security risk to the Western alliance when they meet on Monday, a day after the Group of Seven rich nations issued a statement on human rights in China and Taiwan that Beijing said slandered its reputation.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has described the summit, which U.S. President Joe Biden will attend for the first time, as a “pivotal moment.”

Members aim to show that the seven-decades-old defense alliance remains a central support for U.S. efforts to uphold peace and democracy around the world, including standing up to China and its rapid military rise.

“We know that China does not share our values... we need to respond together as an alliance,” Stoltenberg 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 said, a reference to ports and telecoms networks.

Diplomats said the NATO summit’s final communique would not call China an adversary--and Stoltenberg said China was not an enemy - but would demonstrate concern, calling it a “systemic” challenge to Atlantic security as it joins Russia with military drills, launches cyber-attacks and rapidly builds up its navy.

G7 nations meeting in Britain over the weekend scolded China over human rights in its Xinjiang region, called for Hong Kong to keep a high degree of autonomy and demanded a full and thorough investigation of the origins of the coronavirus in China.

China’s embassy in London said it was resolutely opposed to mentions of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which it said distorted the facts and exposed the “sinister intentions of a few countries such as the United States.”

“China’s reputation must not be slandered,” the embassy said on Monday.

RUSSIA ALSO ON NATO RADAR

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday G7 leaders had rallied around the need to “counter and compete” with China on challenges ranging from safeguarding democracy to technology.

“China will feature in the (NATO) communique in a more robust way than we’ve ever seen before,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Biden’s plane, Air Force One, from the G7 summit in England to the Belgian capital.

Since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, NATO has modernized its defenses but has only recently begun to look more seriously at any potential threat from Chinese ambitions.

From China’s investments in European ports and plans to set up military bases in Africa to joint military exercises with Russia in the Baltic, NATO is now agreed that Beijing’s rise deserves a strong response.

Meanwhile, Russia’s efforts to divide the West will run through discussions, diplomats said, ahead of a meeting between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in Geneva.

“The relationship between NATO and Russia is at a low point, the lowest point since the end of the Cold War,” Stoltenberg told The Times Radio on Sunday.

“We see the willingness to use military force against neighbors; Ukraine, Georgia. But we also see cyber-attacks. We see attempts to meddle in our political democratic processes, to undermine the trust in our institutions and efforts to divide us,” he said.

Given the threats, leaders hope to hear Biden recommit the United States to NATO’s collective defense after his predecessor Donald Trump’s confrontational rhetoric towards allies from 2017 to 2019 at summits created an impression of crisis, envoys said.

“We believe that NATO is vital to our ability to maintain American security and I want them to know that NATO is a sacred obligation,” said Biden on Sunday at the end of the G7 before flying to Brussels.

Related News