NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned that China is far outpacing the navies of the U.S. and its Western allies in the area of shipbuilding.
“By the way, when it comes to shipbuilding, and our navy, and particularly the U.S. Navy, I’m really worried,” Rutte said at the IISS Prague Defence Summit on Thursday morning, September 4.
“Because China now has more ships sailing than the U.S., and shipbuilding in the U.S. is not at a rate that they can anywhere catch up on what China is doing at the moment.”
He also said the European shipbuilding market is developing, “but we need much more if we collectively want to fill that gap.”
Rutte said there is stronger cooperation between NATO and its partners in the Indo-Pacific—Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea—because their theaters are connected.
“When I’m discussing this with the senior policymakers in the U.S., there is increasingly
a realization that if China would one day decide to attack Taiwan, it will not be limited to that attack,” Rutte said.
“Why would not first Xi Jinping call his junior partner in all of this, one Vladimir Putin, to
also keep us busy here in Europe, in the northern Atlantic area?”
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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