Bloomberg: Britain's top foreign and defense officials have held talks with their Australian counterparts in Sydney today. Those talks focused on advancing the AUKUS security pact, which involves nuclear-powered submarines and sharing notes on countering China's growing clout. Does the Foreign Ministry have a response to these talks?

Zhao Lijian: As we have repeatedly stressed, AUKUS is a typical military bloc. The three countries’ cooperation on nuclear-powered submarines violates the purposes and object of the NPT and has a huge impact on the international non-proliferation regime. Therefore, more and more countries have become vigilant and rejected it. The US, the UK and Australia, in disregard of the international community's concerns, willfully advanced cooperation on nuclear-powered submarines. This further revealed their hypocritical cherry-picking double standard on non-proliferation. It is even more untenable for the UK and Australia to hype up the “China threat” narrative in this context. We firmly reject it. Relevant sides should immediately stop the erroneous acts of stoking division and inciting confrontation.