After decades of viewing China as a distant threat, Nato on Wednesday accused Beijing of becoming “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine”, and demanded that it halt shipments of “weapons components” and other technology critical to the rebuilding of the Russian military.

The statement is contained in a declaration approved by the 32 leaders of the alliance, shortly before they headed to a dinner at the White House on Wednesday night. It is a major departure for Nato, which until 2019 never officially mentioned China as a concern, and then only in the blandest of language.

Now, for the first time, the alliance has joined in Washington’s denunciations of China’s military support for Russia.

But the declaration contains an implicit threat that China’s growing support for Russia will come at a cost. China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation”, the declaration said, particularly calling out “its large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”.

The Nato declaration did not specify what those costs would be, although the natural first step would be economic sanctions that barred China from parts of global markets.

Even a year ago, European leaders were hesitant to challenge Beijing.

Many European leaders dismissed the agreement reached in early 2022, just before the Beijing Olympics, for a “partnership without limits” signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Even President Joe Biden said he had his doubts that the two countries, with a long history of enmity, could work together.

“I’ve been hearing now for the past three months about ‘China is going to provide significant weapons to Russia and they’re gonna’ — a lot of talk about that,” Biden added. “They haven’t yet. Doesn’t mean they won’t, but they haven’t yet.”

But 29 months after the invasion of Ukraine, that view has changed drastically. While China has heeded warnings not to supply Russia with full weapons systems, it has done everything short of that, providing computer chips, advanced software and the components needed for Russia to rebuild a defence industrial base that churned out faulty and outdated equipment.

The intelligence evidence was provided to Nato countries by the Biden administration, in an effort to win over sceptics who argued that China was not a central player in the war.

That succeeded, but only after the US published the names, in a treasury department economic sanctions order, of Chinese front companies and manufacturers that were funnelling the technology to Russia.

“The declaration demonstrates that Nato allies now collectively understand this challenge and are calling on the PRC to cease this activity,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said on Wednesday afternoon.

New York Times News Service