China reacts to stories of NATO workplace in Japan

The US-led bloc’s enlargement into Asia will undermine regional peace and stability, Beijing has warned

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged its Asian neighbors to train “high vigilance” in response to media stories claiming that NATO is planning to open its first liaison workplace within the area, in Japan’s capital Tokyo. 

“Asia is an anchor for peace and stability and a promising land for cooperation and development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning stated when addressed on the difficulty throughout a briefing on Thursday. 

Mao warned that “NATO’s continued eastward foray into the Asia-Pacific and interference in regional affairs will inevitably undermine regional peace and stability and stoke camp confrontation.” 

“High vigilance among regional countries” is required in view of the US-led army bloc’s makes an attempt to achieve presence in Asia, she added.

On Wednesday, the Nikkei Asia outlet reported – citing each Japanese and NATO officers – that the US-led army alliance was in talks with Japan to open a liaison workplace within the nation.

According to the outlet’s sources, NATO desires to ascertain a one-man station in Tokyo to have the ability to conduct periodic consultations with Japan and its different allies within the Asia-Pacific, equivalent to Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.

The concept of NATO establishing a liaison workplace was first raised by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg throughout their assembly in Tokyo in late January. Japan should conform to fund the operations of the bloc’s mission to ensure that it to open within the nation, Nikkei Asia added.

The abbreviation ‘NATO’ stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, however the bloc has just lately brazenly admitted that it additionally has pursuits within the Indo-Pacific. Last June, the bloc’s allies from the area participated within the NATO Summit for the primary time ever.

NATO is “strengthening relations” with Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand as a result of “in today’s complex security environment, relations with like-minded partners across the globe are increasingly important to address cross-cutting security issues and global challenges, as well as to defend the rules-based international order,” the bloc stated in a press release final month.

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Russia, which strongly opposes NATO’s enlargement in the direction of its borders, has additionally criticized the bloc’s makes an attempt to unfold its actions into Asia. In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the push by the US and its allies to create what he known as a “global NATO” resembled the actions of Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan within the Nineteen Thirties earlier than the outbreak of World War II.