China likely on Nato agenda over ‘limitless’ Russia partnership, says Lithuanian foreign minister

Baltic country’s Asia-Pacific allies may again attend transatlantic security alliance’s annual meeting, slated this year for Vilnius
China ‘a significant part of conversation’ given possibility of weapons transfers to Russia, Gabrielius Landsbergis adds

US-China relations

Robert Delaneyin Washington

Published: 4:00am, 8 Mar 2023

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Lithuania’s Asia-Pacific allies may attend this year’s Nato summit in Vilnius, where China is likely to be on the agenda because of Beijing’s “limitless” alignment with Russia, the Baltic country’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Gabrielius Landsbergis said China would likely be individually cited for a second consecutive year at the annual Nato meeting, “especially if our Asia-Pacific partners join in the conversation”.

China was identified as a “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security” last year in Nato’s strategic concept – a key document that sets the alliance’s military and security strategy for the next 10 years. It was the first time that the country was identified by the alliance as a threat.

“I’m not sure whether they accepted the invitation, but maybe that’s in due time,” Landsbergis said of Lithuania’s Asia-Pacific allies in remarks at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan Washington think tank.

Landsbergis, right, answers questions from Daniel Fata, a former senior US defence official. Image: CSIS

The foreign minister did not specify which countries had been invited to this year’s Nato summit. Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea attended last year’s meeting in Madrid.

Lithuania has one of Europe’s most contentious relationships with China. The country became embroiled in a trade stand-off with Beijing after Vilnius agreed to allow the self-ruled island’s representative office in Lithuania to use the word “Taiwanese” in its name instead of other identifiers that Beijing finds less objectionable.

The European Union is pushing ahead with a suit against Beijing in the World Trade Organization over alleged economic coercion of Lithuania, whose exporters found themselves frozen out of the Chinese market late last year. US President Joe Biden has also made supporting Vilnius a priority. Washington joined the EU in the WTO suit.

Landsbergis was in the US capital for meetings with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said in a joint statement that they “reaffirmed their strong concerns about the [People’s Republic of China’s] recent and ongoing economic coercion of partner economies and provocative actions that undermine the status quo in the Taiwan Strait”.

How EU-China relations became a casualty of the war in Ukraine

Landsbergis said in his CSIS interview with Daniel Fata, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defence for Europe and Nato, that Beijing’s alignment with Russia potentially put China in Nato’s neighbourhood, making the country a key issue for the Western defence alliance.

While Beijing has called for a “comprehensive ceasefire” in a 12-point position paper that it offered on the anniversary of the war in Ukraine last month, Washington and Brussels have maintained that the Chinese government has a bias towards Russia.

A trip by Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi to Moscow immediately after an EU tour just ahead of the anniversary, without an attempt to meet Ukrainian officials, underscored this assessment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with China’s Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi at the Kremlin in Moscow on Feb. 22. Photo: SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images/TNS

While in the Russian capital, Wang told Russian President Vladimir Putin that China-Russia relations had “withstood pressure” and would not be swayed by any “third party”. Wang met Putin immediately after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“I would assume that [China] will be a significant part of [the] conversation and especially since now there is an added layer regarding the possibility of weapons transfers from China to Russia,” the foreign minister said. A “limitless, without boundaries, partnership between Russia and China brings China from [the] Indo-Pacific region into the North Atlantic”.

Biden administration officials have said repeatedly in recent weeks that Beijing is considering providing Russia with lethal military support for its war. China has repeatedly denied the claim, accusing Washington of spreading “false information”.

“If Russia is starting to rebuild … and China is helping with that, and … building factories near St Petersburg, is it part of North Atlantic security? Is it an issue? I think, definitely, it is,” Landsbergis said.