The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warned on Monday that China’s growing military and its close alignment with Russia, Iran and North Korea meant that Nato should further develop Indo-Pacific partnerships to meet the challenge Beijing posed.

Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, made his remarks at Chatham House in London, coinciding with the US-China ministerial-level trade negotiations in the city.

“What we see at the moment is an enormous build-up in China of their military capabilities,” Rutte, the former prime minister of the Netherlands, said.

He noted that China “already has the world’s largest navy, and this battle force is expected to grow to 435 ships by 2030.

“China is also building up its nuclear arsenal, and it aims to have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads also by 2030,” he added.

The PLA navy is the world’s largest, with 234 warships to the US Navy’s 219, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. And the Pentagon has said that China has more than 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US.