MOSCOW, August 3. /TASS/. NATO’s actions in the Asia-Pacific region are aimed against Russia and China, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui told TASS on Thursday.

As the head of the Chinese diplomatic mission in Moscow pointed out, by now the United States has created an AUKUS military pact (a trilateral military partnership of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) in the Asia-Pacific region and put together a quadripartite QUAD mechanism comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia, and also some "minor groupings."

"Now they want to introduce NATO’s military structure into the Asia-Pacific region to integrate the systems of European and Asian alliances to share expenditures and exert pressure so that the United States can suppress and contain China and Russia and maintain global hegemony," the envoy stressed.

"After an all-out escalation of the Ukraine crisis, the United States manipulated NATO to make it exaggerate the so-called ‘China-Russia threat’ and create a pretext for NATO’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region," the ambassador said.

Therefore, NATO "has long turned into the US geo-political tool" while its expansion into the Asia-Pacific region "is called upon to serve the US hegemony" and is related to the implementation of their Indo-Pacific strategy, the Chinese ambassador said.

True multilateralism

As distinct from the United States, China is a "builder of peace throughout the world," a participant in global development and a defender of international order, which "is ready to bolster strategic interaction with countries of the Asia-Pacific region, including Russia," the envoy said.

"[China is ready] to implement true multilateralism, abide by the concept of common, comprehensive, joint and stable security and play a constructive role in achieving durable stabilization and sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region," the Chinese diplomat went on to say.

"Let’s join our hands and build a community with a single destiny of the Asia-Pacific region," the ambassador said.