Diplomat Gustavo de Arístegui speaks on the new Strategic Concept of the Atlantic Alliance

         Gustavo de Arístegui discusses about the new Strategic Concept of the Atlantic Alliance and about how it considers China as a new challenge. Gustavo does not describe China as an adversary, but as a rival.

According to Gustavo de Arístegui, “China is in the hands of Xi Jinping, who wants to turn China into a rival that climbs several steps to be able to brand it as an adversary. Obviously, from there to becoming an enemy there is a step, for a long time China's expansive and aggressive policies were very worrying and that has not been taken into account in the West”. Mr. Arístegui also says that this was a great headache for the whole world when he was the ambassador to India.

In Gustavo’s words. “Those of us who have served in that area realize that the increasingly intense, aggressive and active presence of China in the South China Sea, the amount of artificial islands that they have created and on which they have placed naval and air bases precisely in order to later claim a territorial sea where they have never had a presence, the ongoing air incidents between the Chinese air force and the US air force, where those sparks may one day escalate”.

Gustavo de Arístegui also explains that they had seen how China's presence was found above all in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean at the moment we but today it is, above all, in the western part. Its special relationship with Sri Lanka was very worrying not only for India but for any country in the northern hemisphere of the western hemisphere and now its growing presence in the Maldives which is like an aircraft carrier. From the north to the south of the Maldives is 1,500 kilometres, which means that the presence of the Chinese Navy in the Maldives is something that is indefensible.

“There are two questions here, China has two souls, the commercial soul where expansion and economic influence is fundamental for China, in recent years it has made an intelligent commercial and financial strategy of expansion towards countries with serious financing and infrastructure needs, and at the same time they have a good opportunity to show their claws without doing it themselves, but, through Russia, at the same time this Russian aggression in Ukraine is causing very serious problems for an essentially exporting economic power”, Gustavo de Arístegui explains.