WASHINGTON/PARIS, May 17 (Portal) – The longest shadows at this week’s Group of Seven (G7) leaders will be cast by two countries not even invited to the Hiroshima meeting: China and Russia .
When leaders from the world’s advanced democracies meet in the western Japanese city for three days starting Friday, officials say they will have to overcome some differences of their own as they aim to show unity in the face of challenges from Beijing and Moscow.
The most striking of the differences within the G7 appears to be over China, several officials told Portal. Countries are wrestling over how to warn about China’s threat to global supply chains and economic security without completely angering a powerful and important trading partner.
The G7 countries – the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Italy – all have close economic ties to China, the world’s second largest economy and a key global manufacturing base and market.
How the G7 will deal with “great power competition” is an important topic at the summit, said Narushige Michishita, a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo.
“They have to deal with economic security and dealing with sensitive technologies,” Michishita said. “It’s all part of the great power competition that’s going on between the United States and Russia and the United States and China.”
Their differences with China became clear after French President Emmanuel Macron visited Beijing last month and urged the European Union to reduce its dependence on the United States.
A senior US administration official told Portal this week the summit will show that leaders are united behind a common approach towards China, although he conceded that it was “one of the more complex issues” of the meeting.
QUESTION OF LANGUAGE
Leaders will also address concerns about China’s use of “economic coercion” in its foreign deals as part of their larger joint statement, with that main statement set to include a “China-specific section,” Portal reported.
There will be a number of other statements, according to high-level German government circles, including on Ukraine, economic resilience and security, food security and others.
“I would call this a geopolitical G7 summit that will deal with a massive security crisis, namely the Russian aggression against Ukraine,” said a French Presidency official.
“It’s also geopolitical because tensions between China and the United States are rising and therefore we need to articulate the rules of the game so that we can preserve our international cooperation capacities,” the official said.
A woman walks past a ‘G7 Hiroshima’ flower installation near the Peace Memorial Museum ahead of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan May 17, 2023. Portal/Androniki Christodoulou
Expected observers include leaders from a number of other countries, including India and Vietnam. The G7 seeks rapprochement with members of the “Global South” to counter China’s role on the world stage.
However, it remains to be seen how directly the language will target China. Some G7 members are skeptical about introducing investment controls in China.
While the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in April “acknowledged the need to work with China on global challenges” and reiterated its call for Beijing to “act as a responsible member of the international community,” neither the group’s climate nor finance leaders mentioned China your messages directly.
The United States is at the forefront of calls for tighter investment controls, but Germany is more cautious given its heavy reliance on trade with Beijing.
Germany wants to see investment scrutiny in specific areas rather than across the board, senior German government officials said.
Japan is also skeptical about investment controls.
FROM RUSSIA TO TAIWAN
Leaders also plan to tighten sanctions on Russia, with measures on energy and exports designed to support Moscow’s war effort, officials with direct knowledge of the talks told Portal.
Aimed at circumventing sanctions against third countries, the new moves aim to undermine Russia’s future energy production and stem trade that supports the Russian military, they said.
When the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are different strategies to end the conflict.
The United States does not want to discuss a diplomatic path forward until it sees how the military offensive unfolds in the spring, officials say, even as its European allies want to have a diplomatic solution in hand.
“From a European perspective, it is about Ukraine’s partners doing everything they can to accelerate their victory,” said a European official, adding that Europe’s response to US and Chinese challenges is also important.
“We must also learn to defend our interests,” the official said.
For hosts Japan, it wants to send a clear message about the importance of the international, rules-based order, officials said, as Tokyo fears Russia’s crackdown on Ukraine could embolden China’s crackdown on Taiwan.
Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in WASHINGTON and John Irish in Paris; Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Kentaro Sugiyama, Kaori Kaneko, Yoshifumi Takemoto, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Katya Golubkova and Sakura Murakami in TOKYO, text by Katya Golubkova; Edited by David Dolan and Kim Coghill
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