CHINA launched a broadside against Nato expansion today days ahead of a G20 planning summit in Bali.

The Indonesia conference will see a bilateral meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and is expected to expose deep divisions on the war in Ukraine, Western sanctions and Nato expansion to include Finland and Sweden, who signed accession protocols on Tuesday.

Mr Blinken accused China at last week’s Nato summit in Madrid of “undermining the rules-based international order,” but Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said today that “so-called rules-based international order is actually a family rule made by a handful of countries to serve the US self-interest” while the US itself “only observes international rules when it sees fit.

“The history of Nato is one of creating conflicts and waging wars … arbitrarily launching wars and killing innocent civilians, even to this day,” Mr Zhao charged, noting the alliance’s role in wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya.

“Facts show that it is not China that poses a systemic challenge to Nato — it is Nato that brings a looming systemic challenge to world peace and security.”

The US-dominated G7 meeting in Germany last week saw a consensus among the US, Canada, European powers and Japan around sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, though these have pushed up the price of oil and gas, paradoxically boosting Russian state revenues.

The G20, a much broader group including Russia and China as well as major developing countries like India, Brazil and Indonesia which have rejected sanctions, is unlikely to see any such agreement.