China has now emerged as the biggest challenge to ever face NATO. In the news this past week (although under reported) NATO, for the first time defined China as a strategic challenge. NATO allies have been trying to figure out whether Beijing is more of an economic opportunity than fundamental problem.
A statement to come out of the recent London Declaration read “We recognize that China’s growing influence and international policies present both opportunities and challenges that we need to address together as an alliance”. This hardly depicts the power and influence that modern day China has in the global hierarchy of nations. China has the worlds largest population, spends the second most money on their military, and will soon surpass the US as the worlds largest economy.
Other issues that China has put forth into the world include repression over one million Uighur Muslims, the Hong Kong protests, and Huawei’s 5G telecom dominance in the marketplace. China and Russia are strengthening their relationship, exhibited by a new 1,800 mile long gas pipeline connecting the two countries to Huawei expanding their relations with Russian Universities and research institutes. With the growing amount of power China exudes we must ask ourselves, how will they use that power?
It’s very unlikely that China would want to promote freedom of speech, dissent, and discourse, let lone rule of law or democratic elections or decision making. These are all ideas which NATO supports, which clearly diverge from what China believes in moving forward. NATO alliance leaders should be developing strategic plans moving forward to deal with the growing issues China exhibits, not mock name call each other. This is a very serious issue which the entire alliance of NATO has to come together to solve.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/07/managing-china-is-natos-biggest-challenge-yet.html