Joe Biden has urged his fellow NATO leaders to face up to China's authoritarianism and growing military might, a change of focus for an alliance created to defend Europe from the Soviet Union during the conflict .
NATO leaders designated China as presenting "systemic challenges" during a summit communique on Monday, taking a forceful stance towards Beijing at Joe Biden's first summit with an alliance that Donald Trump openly disparaged and ridiculed.
The new U.S. president has urged his fellow NATO leaders to face up to China's authoritarianism and growing military might, a change of focus for an alliance created to defend Europe from the Soviet Union during the conflict .
The language within the summit's final communique, which can now set the trail for alliance policy, comes each day after the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations issued a press release on human rights in China and Taiwan that Beijing said slandered its reputation.
"China's stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to alliance security," NATO leaders said during a communique after their summit.
Biden also told European allies the alliance's mutual defence pact was a "sacred obligation" for the us - a marked shift in tone from his predecessor Trump, who had threatened to withdraw from the alliance and accused Europeans of contributing insufficient to their own defence.
"I want all Europe to understand that the us is there," said Biden. "NATO is critically important to us."
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, at her last summit of the alliance before she steps down in September, described Biden's arrival because the opening of a replacement chapter. She also said it had been important to affect China as a possible threat, while keeping it in perspective.
"If you check out the cyber threats and therefore the hybrid threats, if you check out the cooperation between Russia and China, you can't simply ignore China," Merkel told reporters. "But one must not overrate it, either - we'd like to seek out the proper balance."
Biden said both Russia and China weren't acting "in how that's according to what we had hoped".
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said China's growing military presence from the Baltics to Africa meant nuclear-armed NATO had to be prepared.
"China is coming closer to us. We see them in cyberspace, we see China in Africa, but we also see China investing heavily in our own critical infrastructure," he said, a regard to ports and telecoms networks. "We got to respond together as an alliance."
Stoltenberg also said the leaders had agreed to extend their contributions to the alliance's small common budget. The vast bulk of military spending in NATO is handled separately by member countries.
G7 nations meeting in Britain over the weekend scolded China over human rights in its Xinjiang region, involved Hong Kong to stay a high degree of autonomy and demanded a full investigation of the origins of the coronavirus in China.
China's embassy in London said it had been resolutely against mentions of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which it said distorted the facts and exposed the "sinister intentions of a couple of countries like the United States".
"China's reputation must not be slandered," the embassy said on Monday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, arriving at the summit, said there have been both risks and rewards with Beijing.
"I don't think anybody round the table wants to descend into a replacement conflict with China," he said.
From China's investments in European ports and plans to line up military bases in Africa to joint military exercises with Russia, NATO is now agreed that Beijing's rise deserves a robust response, although envoys said that might be multi-faceted.
Allies are mindful of their economic links with China. Total German trade with China in 2020 was quite 212 billion euros ($257 billion), consistent with German government data. Total Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasuries as of March 2021 stood at $1.1 trillion, consistent with U.S. data, and total U.S. trade with China in 2020 was $559 billion.
Biden will meet Russian President Putin on Wednesday in Geneva.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that Russia was trying to "swallow" Belarus which NATO needed to be united in deterring Moscow. Nauseda also said the Baltic nations would push for more U.S. forces in their region to discourage Russia.
