According to a June 7 message from the podcast channel "Pacific Polarity", Jane Hardy, who once served as Australia's ambassador to Spain and consul general in Honolulu, said that China has become an "arms exporting country" and the quality of its weapons is "quite good" and should not be underestimated.
Hardy pointed out that the NATO model "does not work for us", because similar mechanisms necessarily force countries to "take sides". "NATO is a tough collective deterrence alliance, but many countries in our region are unwilling to make choices, and forcing them to do so is foolish," she said.
She added that the reason why the NATO model cannot be replicated also lies in the fact that both NATO and the EU were built from scratch with the help of other countries led by the United States. "But here we have overlapping nationalities and regional intersections, and military equipment is incompatible," she said.
Main Battle Tank VT4A1 displayed at the China Ordnance Pavilion during the 2024 Zhuhai Airshow. Guancha.cn
Hardy mentioned that when she first arrived in Honolulu in 2018, 90% of the military equipment in Southeast Asian countries came from Russia, but the situation has now changed. Advanced military hardware is mainly sold by France and the United States to Southeast Asian countries, which has weakened Russia's influence in these countries.
"In addition, China itself has become an arms exporting country, exporting high-quality strategic materials. I cannot judge their quality, but according to professionals, it is quite good, and we should not underestimate it," Hardy said.
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