Nato doesn’t see China as threat, says top official

Relations between China and Nato's leading member, the United States, sank to a low last year when then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited democratically governed Taiwan which claims the island as its territory.

In response, Beijing severed several formal communications channels with the United States including one between their militaries.

Tensions eased in November when US and Chinese leaders Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met at a G20 summit in Indonesia and pledged more frequent dialogue.

But they flared again in February when a Chinese high-altitude balloon appeared in US airspace and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled a Beijing in response.

Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of Nato's military committee, told journalists Beijing represented "a challenge."

"We are working on military plans against Russia and the terrorist groups. That's where the plans are focusing on," he said after a meeting of the alliance's national military chiefs at Nato headquarters in Brussels.

Bauer also said the war in Ukraine would increasingly be a battle between large numbers of poorly trained Russian troops with outdated equipment and a smaller Ukrainian force with better Western weapons and training

Bauer noted Russia was now deploying significant numbers of tanks designed in the years after World War Two.

The Ukrainians meanwhile would "focus on quality, with Western weapon systems and Western training," Bauer said.

Reuters