backed China amid its tensions with the US over Taiwan.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPutting aside decades of mutual distrust, China and Russia have stepped up military exercises as part of their aligning of foreign policies in recent years to oppose the US-led liberal Western political order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As well as refusing to criticise Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, or even to refer to it as an invasion or war, Beijing has condemned Western sanctions against Moscow, and accuses Washington and NATO of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin into taking action. China also remains a major customer of Russian oil and gas which is being bought at a heavy discount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russia and China are also said to be \u201csharing a toolkit\u201d of approaches and strategies to undermine NATO, according to Julianne Smith, US ambassador to NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThose two are increasingly sharing a toolkit that should concern the NATO alliance, Smith told the Financial Times in an article published on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just no question that the [People\u2019s Republic of China] and Russia are both working to divide\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009the transatlantic partners. And we are now very aware, we all have a deeper appreciation of those efforts and are intent on addressing them,\u201d Smith said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen them share hybrid tactics,\u201d Smith added. \u201cI think China watches very closely how Russia relies on disinformation and things like coercion or energy security, malign or malicious cyber-operations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NATO listed China for the first time in June\u00a0as one of its strategic challenges, saying Beijing\u2019s ambitions and its \u201ccoercive policies\u201d undermined the Western military bloc\u2019s \u201cinterests, security and values\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In November, Tu-95 bombers of the Russian air force and Chinese H-6K bombers flew joint patrols over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. As part of the drills, the Russian bombers landed in China for the first time, and the Chinese bombers flew to an air base in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In September, China sent more than 2,000 troops along with more than 300 military vehicles, 21 combat aircraft and three warships to take part in a sweeping joint exercise with Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Vostok 2022 (East 2022) exercise took place in various locations\u00a0in Russia\u2019s Far East and the Sea of Japan and involved more than 50,000 troops and 5,000 weapons units, including 140 aircraft and 60 warships, according to the Russian defence ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China last week also sent a squadron of navy ships through straits near Japan into the Western Pacific as Beijing blasted Tokyo\u2019s adoption of a new national security strategy putting itself on a more offensive footing \u2014 largely as a result of the perceived threat from China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SOURCE:\u00a0AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joint exercises between the Chinese and Russian navy in the East China Sea that begin this week will \u201cfurther deepen\u201d\u00a0cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, China has announced. The drills will be held off the coast of Zhejiang province south of Shanghai from Wednesday until next Tuesday, according to a brief notice posted on Monday by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308,186,188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-308","category-186","category-188"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4875,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4872\/revisions\/4875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}