MOSCOW, August 3. /TASS/. Beijing has advised Tokyo to withhold its support for NATO expansion, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui told TASS.

"We also advise Japan and other countries to finally learn the lessons of history: One should not disregard the opinions of other countries and singlehandedly undermine the general situation of peace and stability in the region, and one should avoid becoming a conduit for NATO's eastward expansion. As they say, ‘Don’t let the fox guard the henhouse lest he go in and eat them all’ (paraphrasing a famous fable by 19th-century Russian writer Ivan Krylov - TASS)," the Chinese diplomat noted.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the negative scenarios that the US and NATO have engineered in other parts of the world should not be imported into the Asia-Pacific region. He stressed that Russia is working purposefully "to strengthen the architecture of stability and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region created around ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - TASS)."