US: Russia and China want to 'break the West’

Russia and China wants to "break the West", US Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell said.

"Both Russia and China want to break the West: Russia wants to splinter it and China wants to supplant it. One place where they are especially aggressive is in Central and Eastern Europe," Mitchell told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing on US relations with Europe.

Mitchell pointed to instances in which Russia has “intimidated and attacked neighbors,” but he put extra emphasis on the Chinese Communist Party’s bid for influence on the doorstep of the West. China, according to him, spent more than $24 billion financing infrastructure and other investment projects in the region between 2005 and 2017 with the overall goal of acquiring strategically-significant footholds in Europe.

"They use what you could call debt-book diplomacy where they invest in strategic properties and infrastructure on pretty easy terms and then they wait until countries can't service the debt and they claim the infrastructure," Mitchell said of China. "They're sharpening their outreach and soft power, the creation of Confucius centers. So, they're competing for influence," the Washington Examiner cited him as saying.