China refutes NATO accusations against its stance on Russia-Ukraine conflict

By Wang Yiming
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, April 12, 2022
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Smoke rises in the sky above Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

As the Russia-Ukraine conflict grinds on, NATO has been targeting China instead of focusing on facilitating peace talks. Chinese officials, researchers and netizens refuted the accusations by clarifying China's longstanding position of maintaining world peace.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that China's response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict presents a "serious challenge" to the North Atlantic alliance after a meeting last week.

"We have seen that China is unwilling to condemn Russia's aggression, and Beijing has joined Moscow in questioning the right of nations to choose their own path," said Stoltenberg, adding that "this is a serious challenge to us all. It makes it even more important that we stand together to protect our values."

The NATO chief also claimed the necessity of taking into account "how China's growing influence and coercive policies affect our security."

In a recent opinion article, Chen Yang, who is the deputy director and associate researcher of the Institute of European Studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, called NATO's accusations against China both baseless and clumsy.

When analyzing the reasons underlying such claims, Chen said that in response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, NATO, behind the scenes, sent money and weapons and Western countries launched unprecedented sanctions in an attempt to put pressure on Russia. However, without China, Russia's largest trading partner, the effect of economic containment may be greatly reduced.

BRICS, the Middle East and many African countries have not joined the sanctions, but NATO only targeted China and interpreted China's stance with self-imposed bias, the researcher said, adding that these claims that smear China are nonsense and expose the deep-rooted arrogance of Western centralism.

On Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian called on NATO to immediately stop spreading disinformation and provocative remarks targeting China, as well as to abandon the confrontational approach of drawing ideological lines.

Some Chinese netizens also commented on such arguments. One user on Weibo said that NATO and its "client states" have long made defamatory allegations against China, which posed a "serious challenge to us all." Another netizen questioned why they didn't condemn when NATO bombs fell on the ground of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, others also said that China has been promoting world peace and NATO should stop picking a fight with China in the name of peace.

This is not the first time that NATO has made reference to China regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In a joint statement after an extraordinary summit of the military alliance in Brussels on March 24, NATO leaders called on all states, "including China," to "abstain from supporting Russia's war effort in any way, and to refrain from any action that helps Russia circumvent sanctions."

The statement also called on China to "cease amplifying the Kremlin's false narratives, in particular on the war and on NATO, and to promote a peaceful resolution to the conflict."

In response to such claims, the spokesperson of the Chinese Mission to the EU said that China firmly opposes such groundless accusations and suspicions, as well as any attempts to exert coercion and pressure against China. 

The spokesperson once again repeated China's "longstanding and consistent position" that China maintains that the sovereign independence and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected, and that the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter be upheld.

"Since the crisis broke out in Ukraine, China has been working actively and constructively in an objective and impartial manner, to facilitate peace talks, the cessation of conflicts, as well as the avoidance of a large-scale humanitarian crisis," he said.

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