The US is ramping up its military presence in the Pacific region in a bid to bind Beijing's neighbours to the war-wagon, a senior Chinese general has said.
“The true motive is to converge various small circles into a big circle that is an Asia-Pacific version of NATO, to maintain American hegemony," Lieutenant General Jing Jianfeng, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, told a security summit in Singapore.
"The US strengthens its military presence to force other countries to choose sides and advances the eastward expansion of NATO," Jing said, adding that such maneuvers create chaos and “bind regional countries with the American war chariot."
He also called the US “the greatest challenge to regional peace and stability.”
Jing said Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy aims to “bring division, provoke confrontation and undermine stability.”
Jing's speech came in response to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's statement that war with China was neither imminent nor inevitable. Jing accused the US of seeking a NATO-like alliance in Asia.
The US has recently sought to deepen cooperation with all possible allies in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to support its own interests and contain China. Together with Australia and the United Kingdom, the United States formed the AUKUS political-military alliance — under which it is expanding its nuclear-powered submarine fleet.