China is not impressed — again.
Following a high-profile speech by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at Chatham House in London, Beijing has issued a characteristically stern rebuke after Rutte named China alongside Russia, North Korea and Iran as contributors to growing global instability and direct supporters of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
In his remarks, Rutte warned that Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years and accused Moscow of reconstituting its military using Chinese technology. He also highlighted Beijing’s own rapid military build-up, noting that China now fields the world’s largest navy and is expected to have over 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.
“Russia has teamed up with China, North Korea and Iran… They are expanding their militaries and their capabilities,” he said. “Russia is reconstituting its forces with Chinese technology, and producing more weapons faster than we thought.”
During a follow-up Q&A, Rutte doubled down. “These four working together is, of course, a relevant development… Clearly, we are also focusing on what China is doing.”
In response, the Chinese Embassy in London released a statement that might as well have been pulled from a diplomatic bingo card, accusing NATO of “smearing and scapegoating” China and calling the alliance a “remnant of the Cold War.”
“China firmly opposes NATO’s smearing and scapegoating of China. We oppose NATO using China as an excuse for its continued military build-up and disruption of global and regional security,” the statement said, insisting that China’s military posture is strictly defensive and that the country remains “a stabilising factor in the world.”
Rutte’s remarks, while stark, are not new. NATO has been increasingly vocal about China’s strategic alignment with Russia, particularly since the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine. But Rutte’s speech marked one of the clearest efforts yet to frame China as part of a four-nation axis that NATO must reckon with.
Beijing, however, appears genuinely irked by being listed next to North Korea.
“We urge NATO to stop creating imaginary enemies and take concrete steps to promote world peace, stability and development,” the Embassy added.
Back in London, Rutte’s tone was more urgent than inflammatory. “The main long-term threat against NATO is Russia,” he said, “but what we see at the moment is an enormous build-up in China of their military capabilities.”
The Chinese response, equal parts denial and indignation, may come as no surprise, but the underlying reality Rutte described remains: China and Russia are drawing closer in practical defence terms, and NATO is no longer pretending otherwise. Whether Beijing likes being mentioned or not, it’s now firmly in the frame.
China is supplying drones body armour to Russia isn’t it, plus weren’t chinese soldiers captured in Ukraine recently?
Hard for them to argue they’re not teaming up!
No, Chinese mercenaries similar to western mercenaries fighting for Ukraine. Literally no difference.
Massive difference, western “mercaneries” as you call them or volunteers as the people call themselves are fighting on soil recognised by China its self as Ukrainian. Chinese mercenaries are operating inside Ukraine for a hostile occupation force.
That’s a massive violation of international law and highlights Chinese complicity.
Even the North Koreans were careful enough to make sure they were on Russian soil.
There are no western ‘mercenaries’ fighting for Ukraine. Ukranian military pay is below welfare levels in all Western countries. The volunteers are not motivated by money.
Russia may be using Chinese mercenaries. It is using Noth Korean regulars
You mean western volunteers, they are not there to enrich themselves or backed secretly or insidiously by the state. Either you are naive or pushing their narrative, which is it?
I just love the irony their u precedented military build up peaceful, defensive and a pillar of regional peace and security while NATO build up after decades of disarmament is the opposite. It’s not only reminiscent of Putin logic but Trump too, whereby Ukraine is deemed guilty of attacking the overwhelming bully invading its soil with its chin.
Russia has gone from 300 T90-Ms produced in a year to a production rate of 1500+ T90-Ms this year.
1500 other armoured vehicles to 4000 this year.
Chinese and North Korean soldiers have been captured and caught Red handed fighting for Russia inside Ukraine.
So Russia has already made Ukraine the site of the first shots of WW3. NATO just hasn’t been dragged into the conflict yet.
Middle east is in flames.
Israel are expected to strike Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites imminently. Leading to another conflagration there.
NATO needs to radically and urgently rearm.
If Russia can triple war production in a year and then triple it again next year then NATO will need munitions, drones, ATGW, A2A missiles, GBAD, SAMs in huge numbers to meet this threat and chew it up.
It’s all happening too quickly, hence the UK rhetoric ‘Britain is ready to fight,’ yes, with what we have got now! It’s the same bloody shambles we faced in 1940, where Churchill had been addressing parliament for most of the 1930s about the risks of not rearming. Once Chamberlin’s cabinet realised the dangers, it did a complete 360 just as Starmer is doing today.
Who’s Churchill in this scenario?
I think you mean 180
You really must try to remember that Labour have been in power for less than a year, this a 180 (sic) turnaround will be to reverse the problems of the previous 14 year conservative term.
If I may, Redshift, it is more like the past 40 to 50 years with regards to our conventional forces. If they do manage to increase conventional forces mass it will be the first time in my life time that the armed force have not shrunk in the name of efficiency. Efficiency was even used in the 1980’s when the Cold War was very much still on!
It just accelerated with the peace dividend…
Cheers CR
It is indeed much much longer, and in the case if the RN it started as far back as the 1960s, however what it is not is ” starmer” or the current labour government .. well at least not yet.
It’s not Starmer or Labours issue, they aren’t to blame for the perilous state of affairs. It’s the Tories who were in power for 14+ years and ignored the Russian capture of Crimes, ignored the collapse of the unity of the Western alliance through the humiliation of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
The Tories delivered what miserly armed forces we have now.
Labour have upped the defence budget, pushed for large scale industrial base expansion to support a prolonged war effort if required and put firm plans forward to better support the UK armed forces as a resilient power.
We are not seeing a crash rearmament programme as the Russian-Chinese threat is not now it is in a couple of years time….we hope.
7000 cruise missiles, drone missiles silo ships, long range attack missiles to offer a viable conventional deterrent is all about making the armed forces much more deadly and making an enemy think carefully whether they want to risk a large scale conventionally armed counter attack.
I’m hoping we will soon see F35A and B orders, more typhoons, hopefully some more Poseidon MPA
Wedgetails order back upto 5 and then moving to 7
Additional frigates and a move to the left and speeding up SSNr so it’s ready to get construction going asap, pretty much as soon as dockyard capacity allows.
In the meantime additional sub surface heavy weight drones and ASW drone motherships are the way to add platforms and firepower as a second line persistent sea control presence.
I actually agree with SDSR. We need a maritime focussed armed forces.
Except in 1939 we’d been rearming for at least 5 years & already had a huge navy, a decent army & air force. We’re starting rather later with forces too small for benign peacetime.
The New York Times is reporting that the FSB refer to China as the enemy. Maybe history is repeating itself after all the nazis got cheap oil and resources from Russia (Soviet Union)then turned against it. China is getting a lot of cheap oil and resources from Russia. There’s a lot of historical Chinese land in Russia. Could lightning strike twice?!
You mean western volunteers, they are not there to enrich themselves or backed secretly or insidiously by the state. Either you are naive or pushing their narrative, which is it?
I’d be nervous if I was Russia, the far east of Russia can’t be that well defended anymore. They aren’t going to stop China if they come knocking…
You wonder why China bothers with such statements, no one believes them and their psyops are terrible, their diplomats always come over as preachy idiots clearly lying. Wolf warriors indeed 😂
The Russians are way better at lying. It’s about the only thing they are good at, they are terrible at fighting. Never won a war without devastating their one country and now they have donkeys
When will orcs learn.
China is blinding at political warfare… it’s essential grown it’s GDP 100 time over since 1980 all by political warfare.. it’s pushed Half the second and third world into debt slavery, it has even convinced western politicians it was a friend..it has 3 million political warfare operatives at all times stoking the fires of disunity in the west.. china diplomacy is not Aimed at nato.. its aimed at the rest of the world.
Its GDP was so low prior to 1980 because of its political warfare. As soon as it stopped its GDP reverted to the mean.
You can’t trap countries in debt traps, ultimately they just default and there is nothing you can do because you can’t invade.
China has only trapped its self.
For all its efforts china has three weak allies in the World. The USA has easily over 100 even with the Donald.
Still the west gets it wrong.. Russia is not the major threat to NATO china is.. its Chinese missile tec being feed to the Middle East, it’s Chinese weapons that keep the Pakistan Indian conflict in any way equitable, Chinese money that is turning Africa and much of South America against the west, it’s the PLAN that can fight the USN to a bloodbath standstill and yet rebuild within a few years.. China has over 50% of the worlds shipbuilding capacity not Russia.. china has more ICBMs now than russia.. china is building around 100- 150 ICBMs, warheads and silos a year.. no one else is doing that.
We forget that NATO has a western boarders and the enemy on that western border is china a nation significantly more powerful than the USSR ever was in every metric other than nuclear warheads/strategic forces and SSNs.
Given its size and scope it’s entirely correct that China has as many nuclear weapons as the USA. Big question should be why Russia and the USA have 6’000 each.
Well it’s a cut down from 27,000 each..
Especially when you consider 1000 being used means you essentially end worldwide agro production for a decade.. which would take down civilisation and most of humanity.
The ChiComs are rapidly addressing a perceived deficiency in terms of nuke warhead inventory:. 1000 by 2030, 1500 by 2035. Would presume that there is an equivalent plan re SSN production.
China can bugger off
They are the number 1 threat to any peace
Russia is their little puddle and client state.
I noticed they haven’t answered Australia’s defence minister’s question.
Why are they arming at such a scale, what do they intend to do with such an armed forces of such size and power?
Well it’s because they fully intend to finish off their civil war and reunify and go to war with anyone that gets in the way of that.. this is the problem the US has, it’s not going to deter China from doing that.
Certainly agree that it is a question of when, not if, PRC executes plans for SCS domination. “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”
Interestingly I think there is a subtle variation. Because china has:
1) what it must have
2) what it would like to have
The first it will risk almost anything for including a 50/50 war to destruction and no deterrence will prevent it. The second it will risk a bit for but it can be deterred..
with China, Taiwan is an overriding need, it sees it as an international civil war that must be finished.. in the end even the Republic of China see it the same way. So China will go to war..imagine if the US had a civil war ( another one) and the losing side retreated to Alaska.. the rest of the US would not let it end there.. same for China really.
But the wider question is how far would china push for wider power.. and I honestly don’t think it would push to a major war..
So for the US that’s a big thing to consider really.
Johnathon,
Interesting hypothesis, rather a case of the ChiComs believing that: ‘What is mine is mine and what is yours is negotiable.”
Just tell the Chicoms to Foxtrot Oscar.
So the CRINK axis has gone mainstream. Well done Rutte for saying it.
As for China’s rebuttal they just sound well, disconnected from the real world.!? I can only assume that their diplomats are saying what they are told to say and whoever is issuing the orders really doesn’t understand the West and [flawed] free press. Although, the strong rhetoric is probably aimed at the rest of the world.
Jonathan’s summary of China’s global activities is succinct and sadly pretty damned accurate. The Belt and Road Initiative and the associated “debt-trap diplomacy” is yielding significant benefits for China. Sri Lanka is in debt to China and has lost control of Hambantota Port to a Chinese company as a consequence. Although it should be stated that Sri Lanka’s problems are not entirely down to borrowing from China, the Chinese have been quick to exploit the situation. Other examples include Fiji, Kenya…
In Ukraine, Russia thought they were going to be fighting quick war. Well they got that wrong and if that sound familiar it should do. Now they are ramping up production and the rearmament rate is startling (interesting that it is the T-90 and not the T-14 that is being built at scale?). They couldn’t do this with support from the other CRINK axis nations, especially China. All roads lead to Beijing and as Jonathan points out there is a western frontier to NATO and China is the big threat there.
I would also point out that the Arctic is the other major front between NATO and the CRINK Axis. The Arctic is not a particularly big ocean and has the icy melts you can understand why the US and Trump are worried about their northern flank. Greenland and parts of northern Canada are actually quite close to the Russian Arctic coastline and they are building bases all along that coast and indeed on some of their islands deep in the Arctic Ocean. Makes a mockery of their objections to Norway looking to put a military base on Svalbard, Norway / NATO need to act fast.
Do a search on China Arctic Map, a very interesting map should come up with a couple of sea routes marked…
eNATO sends carrier strike groups out to the Far East and it is right to do so. Climate change and the melting ice is changing the threat in the Arctic region and bring China, if not quite on to Europe’s doorstep then certainly into the neighbourhood for those NATO countries bordering the Arctic Ocean. Iceland, Greenland Canada and Norway with the northern regions of Sweden and Finland not that far inland from the Arctic coast well with in naval air striking distance. So now is the time to realise that simply focusing on Russia is not going to cut in the future. It will take 10 years at least to get even close to being able to deter the combined threats posed by the CRINK Axis. Send carrier strike groups to the Indo-Pacific is a start, the high north will soon start to figure in the public mind when the argy bargy that has gone on under the ice starts to spread into the visible above the wave realm as those new Russian bases strongly suggest that it will. Like it or not, Greenland is rapidly becoming a frontline ‘state’ as is Canada.
So with the accepted threat to the US on the other side of the Pacific, the melting ice and a war in Europe there has been and will continue to be a significantly increase the frontal area to NATO, which make the treaty geographic limits looking increasingly out of date. The risk profile presented by the developing CRINK Axis is significant and the focus is no longer just on the European continent. It straddles the northern hemisphere and stretches in to the Pacific Rim.
The maritime flank is getting significantly more complex and we definitely need a bigger navy. The Royal Navy still, just about, has the corporate knowledge to make a difference, if it had the mass… Any conflict with the CRINK Axis will be global…
Cheers CR
PS. Interesting that Trump seems to have unleashed Israel this morning (13/06/2025) onto to the only non-nuclear armed nation in the CRINK Axis… Iran. So what will the rest of the CRINK nations do? Probably not a lot, this time.
CR,
Another masterful summation! 👍 Believe the Nordic countries (w/ the possible exception of Denmark) have begun to perceive the Arctic threat. Combined C&R plans and ops in the Arctic will be formidable. Probable Norwegian selection of T-26 is not merely happenstance. Unfortunately, the current Canadian government, though it may recognize the threat, is unwilling to increase defence expenditures to a commensurate level. Certainly agree that the next 10-15 years of CRINK v. NATO competition could prove to be a sporting proposition.
Yep they have a new programme for around 16 modern boats apparently
At present they have 9 boats
3 old type 91s that are by metrics shite..probably about on par with an old soviet November class.. these will be gone pretty soon.. next couple of years.
2 type 93s older and probably about as good as a soviet victor 1, so not very but still usable as a threat if you throw them in a big ocean and don’t get fancy. They will probably stay in service into the early 2030s
4 type 93A now these are a diverse bunch.. they have tails the early ones are Victor 2 level, later ones victor 3 .. they will be about until 2040
As of 2022 they have launched 8 type 93b SSGNs as serious leap, it’s got pump jet propulsion, vertical launch silos for 1500mile range cruise missiles, it’s probably as good as a late generation Cold War SSN.. vanguard, Los Angeles , Akula class…
Build wise it looks like the can produce 3-4 of these a year at present so by 2027 they should top off at 16
They have apparently laid down the first of the new type 95 which will follow from the Type 93b after the possible 16.. it’s very likely the 95 is going to be as good as any current SSN with a large number of vertical launch silos.
they also think the shipyard is heading to 5-7 SSNs a year production.. which is scary as..
As of 2025/6 SSN wise they will have up to
3 type 91
2 Type 93
4 type 93A
8 type 93b
As of 2027 ( the we will be ready for war time) they will have
2 type 93
4 type 93A
16 type 93b
If it can then move to production of the 95 at a 4 per year rate by 2029 they will have 30 SSN… considering at that point it’s projected the USN will be down to 41 SSNs..
Added to that it will have 14 mixed older electric boats, 13 song class electric boats ( one of these famously penetrated a US carrier group and popped up at the five mile kill range of the carrier.. these 27 boats are pure China seas green water vessels.
It’s also got 20 AIP 3500ton type 39A/B open ocean conventional powered attack subs, with plans for 25.
Finally there is the new Type 39 replacement the type 41 auxiliary nuclear boat a larger version of the electric boats that seems to have vertical launch silos and an auxiliary nuclear generator for prolonged operations.
They seem to be producing about 2-3 per year from the electric/ AIP ship yard..
All in all by 20 27 China could have a mix of 75 SSN, AIP attack boats and regional electric boats.. about 1 third each..Against a us fleet that would be down to about 56 SSNs.. it’s gradually getting stickier and stickier for the USN sub surface fleet and by 2030 they may be facing 2 to 1 odds.. they are better, but that’s steep none the less.
As for unmanned systems the Chinese are all over that as well have developed about 5 different xtra large unmanned sub surface vessels.. with the big difference being that its seems china has stuck torpedo tubes on theirs which is a worrying threat..
All in all post 2027 it’s likely the only real advantage the US will have is in carriers.. and it will need every single one of those it has to crack any China seas bastion China puts around Taiwan..
I did read that the present Chinese naval shipbuilding program is the biggest ever undertaken in history.. even the wartime navel shipbuilding programmes and the US is managing to turn out on average 1 surface escort and 1 SSN a years.. it’s honestly looking dire.. and I suspect at some point the US may be forced to back away from tiawain or face catastrophic losses to the USN that it no longer has the industrial base to replace.. China on the other hand build its fleet in essentially a decade.. I fear the USN is where the post war RN was..
If the CCP is upset, we’re probably doing the right thing. Incessantly conducts hostile ops against us whilst repressing its own people & supporting those who repress theirs( N Kores, Burma etc). Steadily getting a grip/leverage over most of the world, massive military build up, wants to be top dog & wipe out freedom. All the time talking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth, but that’s Chinas “must never lose face” culture. yet HMG are sucking up to them again for short sighted investment that always comes with strings attached to coerce. Cutting our own orkers throats to export most of our manufacturing to the far east was extremely dumb, but greed rules our leaders.
Strictly defensive CCP says. Tell that to Vietnam, India, Tibet, the Uighurs, all the nations gazzumped by the SCS islands thefts, Taiwan.