“It is inevitable that China will adopt some kind of countermeasures,” he said. Global times wrote, in an opinion piece, about Australia’s close alliance with Beijing’s oldest enemy.

The English language Global times is a nationalist and pro-military propaganda media outlet, aimed at a western audience.

Global times He warned that Australia “will pay a price” if it continues to move towards an Asia-NATO alliance with the United States, Japan and India.

“When the military confrontation in the region intensifies, as far as all the countries in the region are concerned, China should have the greatest resistance,” the newspaper predicted.

“Countries like Japan and Australia have been used as America’s tools,” he said.

“It is fair to say that Japan and Australia set a bad example by interpreting their biggest trading partner China as a ‘security threat’, acting at the behest of the United States.”

Global times He insisted that China was interested in “peaceful development” in the Indo-Pacific, stating: “The United States, Japan and Australia are forcing China to explore deeper military cooperation with others.”

Canberra’s relationship with Beijing is at a very low point, with China showing its commercial strength to ban Australian imports of coal, beef, wine, timber, grains and lobsters.

Beijing’s construction of islands in the South China Sea and its declaration of an air defense zone in the waters of the East China Sea has disturbed the United States and alarmed regional neighbors such as Japan.

China has slowly been consolidating its military presence on seven artificial islands in the South China Sea, incorporating defense systems and increasing radar capabilities.

Still to be formally signed, the Reciprocal Access Agreement would allow troops to visit each other’s countries for training and joint operations.

It would also improve their interoperability and cooperation.

The agreement is the first of its kind for Japan since its 1960 status-of-forces agreement with the United States, which set the terms for the base of some 50,000 American troops to operate in and around Japan under the security pact between Japan and the United States.