Embassy says days when G7 dictates to the world are over
With EU figures rejecting Cold War, US leader faces hard sell at talks, experts say
China’s embassy in the United Kingdom said that international decisions can no longer be dictated by a small cadre of global elites, after leaders at the meeting of the G7 group of wealthy nations, which concluded on Sunday, unveiled a new infrastructure plan intended to compete with China’s cross-border development plan the Belt and Road Initiative.
The embassy made its remarks on Saturday, ahead of the conclusion of the G7 Summit taking place in Cornwall in the UK, attended by leaders from the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. The infrastructure plan, which is called Build Back Better World, or B3W, is being spearheaded by US President Joe Biden, who identified the summit as an opportunity to “discuss strategic competition with China”, according to a White House statement.
“The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone,” a spokesman from the Chinese Embassy in the UK said. “We always believe that countries, big or small, strong or weak, poor or rich, are equals, and that world affairs should be handled through consultation by all countries.”
The embassy criticized the clique-based politics of the Western countries, saying that there should be “only one system and one order in the world, that is, the international system with the United Nations at the core and the international order based on international law, not the so-called system and order advocated by a handful of countries”.
The White House said the B3W plan will “help narrow the $40 trillion infrastructure need in the developing world”.
But few details have been provided as to how the plan will be implemented and no investment figures were given either.
A senior official in Biden’s administration said that the plan is “not just about confronting or taking on China”.
Christopher Bovis, a professor of international business law at Hull University, said that the B3W is a strategic play to increase the influence of the G7 on the international stage and compete with the Belt and Road Initiative, which has gathered pace since it was introduced in 2013 with over 130 countries now formally affiliated.
“The intention of G7 economies to offer developing nations an infrastructure plan, referred to as the B3W initiative, is certainly seen as an attempt to counter China’s growing influence and success of the Belt and Road Initiative,” Bovis told China Daily.
“Furthermore, the B3W, if implemented, is expected to act as a conveyor belt of Western values, standards and the way of doing business, an outcome which will likely be seen as a post-colonial attempt to integrate economically developing economies,” Bovis said.
Bovis questioned if the G7 was the suitable group to spearhead such an initiative.
Paul Rogers, a professor of peace studies at Bradford University in the UK, suggested that the G7 may in fact have become outmoded in an increasingly interconnected world with a growing list of shared threats.
“While the G7 is an important meeting, the G20 is far more significant, because it is more representative of the global community,” Rogers told China Daily.
When US President Joe Biden meets European Union leaders on Tuesday for the US-EU summit he will continue to try to push the bloc into his anti-China alliance, but analysts say that EU leaders disagree with the United States’ Cold War approach against China.
EU leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen were reportedly among those refusing to endorse Biden’s extreme hard-line comments on China at the G7 summit that concluded in the United Kingdom on Sunday.
In Brussels, Biden was due to meet NATO allies on Monday at their first summit since 2018, and attend the first US-EU summit since 2014 on Tuesday before departing for Geneva for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
Thorny issues on steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, long-standing disputes over subsidies to aircraft makers Boeing and Airbus and coordination on technology policy are among the topics for the summit.
The US and the EU are likely to announce a wide-ranging partnership around technology and trade in line with a proposal for the establishment of a EU-US Trade and Technology Council.
The Biden administration has indicated a truce on some tit-for-tat trade retaliations with Europe to coax the EU into its anti-China alliance, under the US’ efforts to bring about an economic decoupling from China.
However, the EU doesn’t see China as a threat the way the US does. The EU has described its relations with China as complex, regarding the country as a negotiating partner, an economic competitor and a systemic rival at the same time.
Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, said that decoupling with China is “virtually impossible” given China’s huge investments in the US financial system. She said that when the US talked about making steel and aluminum all in the US like in a wartime scenario, it worried many Europeans.
“That gives Germans and others a great deal of concern, wondering if we’re careening into indeed some kind of Cold War or hot war confrontation with China,” Hill, who served as deputy assistant to the US president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the White House National Security Council from 2017 to 2019, told a seminar on Friday on Biden’s trip and transatlantic relations.
Political divisions
The EU has welcomed Biden on the international scene after four years of tensions with Trump, but the EU is also wary of the consequences of a divided political landscape in the US and the potential return of another populist president after the next US election.
James Goldgeier, also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that while the EU shares the US’ concerns on some human rights issues, it’s a lot harder to have a total convergence on economic and technological issues since China is now the EU’s biggest trade partner.
David Miliband, president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee and a former British foreign secretary, said there is a responsibility for nations to pursue cooperation despite differences in political and economic systems.
“I think there are enough big issues where global cooperation is not just necessary but possible alongside system competition,” he said on Friday.
Biden’s hard-line policy on China also drew criticism from Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a senior official on European affairs in the administration of Barack Obama.
Kupchan said that even if containment worked against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a with-us-oragainst-us strategy against China will not deliver the same results today.