Nato has joined US in regarding China as a ‘risk’ to security, US envoy says
- Comments by Kay Bailey Hutchison, US representative at Nato, follow alliance chief’s depiction of China as ‘really changing the security environment we face’
- Still, analyst says, while Europe and US are converging on view of China, ‘assertions that the entire alliance sees the risk clearly are wishful thinking’
America and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization arrived “late to the game” but now see clearly that China is a “risk”, Kay Bailey Hutchison, the US envoy to Nato, said on Wednesday, citing Beijing’s military build-up, its continued theft of intellectual property and its moves to stifle dissent in Hong Kong.
Her comments were the latest from a senior Trump administration official highlighting the intense US distrust towards China during the Xi Jinping era, and its persistent efforts to persuade allies to regard China and its Communist Party the same way.
“I think we‘ve been late to the game. We have been late in assessing China as a risk,” Hutchison said. “We either bring them in, as I said before, and give them every benefit of the doubt – but we are now, I would say, a little more clear-eyed.”
Speaking to a virtual audience hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank, Hutchison said that the world had tried to give Beijing a chance to participate in the “rules-based order”, but that it had shown it could not be trusted to play fairly.
She cited Beijing’s moves to enforce the controversial national security law in Hong Kong and punish dissent in the city.
