CHINA’s “imperial” ambitions represent a major threat to world security, with the South China Sea a potential flashpoint, an expert in US-China relations has said, just days after analysts suggested Beijing was drawing up plans for wars with United States and India.
And Professor Michael Cullinane, Professor of US History at the University of Roehampton, said NATO was in danger of becoming an “anachronism” as it struggled to adapt to the new world order of the 21st century. Mr Cullinane told Express.co.uk he was particularly concerned at the attempts by the Philippines to alter the terms of the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty with the US, which critics fear could result in Manila allying itself with Beijing. China’s President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to the country in November, during which he and controversial Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte agreed a joint oil and gas exploration.
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Days earlier, at the ASEAN summit Singapore, Mr Duterte, told reporters: “China is already in possession of the South China Sea. It’s now in their hands,”
“So why do you have to create frictions that will prompt a response from China?
“China is there, that’s a reality, and America and everybody should realise that they are there.”
Prof. Cullinane warned such attitudes would present major challenges for the West going forward, especially coupled with China’s ongoing trade dispute with the United States.
Emphasising that he was talking about the regime as opposed to the Chinese people, he said: “China has bases on many of the islands in the South China Sea and the Philippines is under pressure to go along with that.
“China supposedly has this 1,000 year history of not invading places but this is anything but that – this is old school imperialism.
“This is looking more and more like a 19th century world we are living in, where power talks, and that’s largely why Donald Trump was elected of course.
“NATO is becoming more anachronistic, and is looking more and more like a European defence mechanism.