Alabama's Morning News with JT
Jonathan Savage on China's growing ambition pushing eastern countries towards NATO
You know, I don't trust China. And a lot of the rest of the world doesn't either because they have some growing ambitions. They're pushing further and further to try and take back Taiwan, to try and take control of other things. And a lot of countries are worried about it in NATO. And that's the reason why NATO is getting even more interested in maybe we should draw together to make sure that we're protected against what China might have in store for us. Joining me now from London is Jonathan Savage. Jonathan, I understand that a lot of these countries are very concerned about what China is up to. - Yeah, just go back a few years and China was barely mentioned at NATO summit, but it has a real part to play in this one. And that's partly because there are leaders there who are members of NATO, but they wanted to be part of the conversation. They're leaders of New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. They have a shared concern over China being assertive, aggressive, some might say, in the Asia Pacific and they're turning to NATO to try and get some powerful floor brands, get some shared solutions. China is taking claims to disputed territory. At sea, there are concerns about China interfering in democracy, stealing intellectual property, state secrets, technology secrets. And that's why these countries have decided to join up with NATO at the summit this week. - And the thing is, China is, are they a member of any particular or, because I realized the N, and the NA in NATO stands for North Atlantic, but is there some sort of organization that China is a member of that other countries like the United States are a member of? - They're not a member of a security organization of the same scale of NATO. There's no alternative. I mean, NATO was set up after the Second World War during the Cold War as a sort of democratic alternative to Russia and the communist countries of Eastern Europe. There was NATO and the Warsaw Pact essentially providing security to each other if one was invaded, everyone would respond. Since the fall of Eastern Europe, since the end of communist Russia, NATO has become a bit broader. And now China, Russia still sees NATO as an adversary, but NATO now clearly sees problems all over the world. China doesn't have this level of alliance, but then to be honest, China is a strong nuclear power. Doesn't necessarily need it. - Does China get along well with other countries that we don't like, like say Russia or Pakistan? - China has a growing and really quite strong connection to Russia at the moment, stronger since the start of the war in Ukraine when Russia was essentially turned into a pariah by much of the world. They turned to China to maintain international relations and China has given them diplomatic cover and supplied them with technology and bought a lot of resources from Russia to keep their economy going. So China has that relationship too, but there was also concerns coming out of NATO, which is calling China a decisive enabler of Russia's war in Ukraine. That is, that's the part of real war of words in the past 24 hours. China then told NATO stop interfering in our internal politics. China accusing NATO of creating turmoil in Europe and warning NATO not to cause what it calls chaos in the Asia Pacific. - One of the things that a lot of especially Republican politicians in America have pointed out is under the Biden administration, we have projected a much weaker America to our adversaries across the world and that is emboldened countries like Russia and like China to do things they wouldn't have done under a more forceful, more formidable administration. - Certainly people are saying that one of the reasons Russia invaded Ukraine was because they thought NATO was weak and probably by extension, they thought the United States was weak. And that's why you've seen since then, a real push by NATO and the US to try to limit Russia's ambition, to give Ukraine so much support. China possibly felt the same way, but China has its own problems economically. So yeah, there is that argument that has been made, but the other argument of course, which is being made, is that yes, even if the United States is seen by some as a weaker power and the Western allies in Europe feel that they need the United States to be a stronger ally than ever before. - Jonathan Savage, thank you so much for joining us this morning from London.