The Group of Seven (G7) summit ended on Sunday. After the meeting, the countries issued a communiqué, which openly criticized China and mentioned issues related to China’s Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The communiqué also mentioned opposition to “forced labor” and “unilateral attempts to change the status quo” in the East and South China Seas. Attitudes were expressed in different degrees of tone. Some directly named China. Others made implications without calling China’s name directly, but made the country the unmistakable target. This has been the most systematic condemnation against China and interference in the country’s affairs by major Western powers. The US apparently dominated the attitude of its allies. The G7 leaders called “for a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened Phase 2 COVID-19 Origins study, including, as recommended by the experts’ report, in China,” the communiqué said. Almost every issue on which Washington has recently attacked China has been mentioned in the communiqué. On the other hand, the language of the communiqué was somewhat softer than previous Washington slanders against China. For example, much of the fiercest US rhetoric against China has been directed at issues over Xinjiang and Hong Kong, including accusations of “genocide” in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. However, in the communiqué, it says that “we will promote our values, including by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law.” All this demonstrates that the US may have the ability to drive major Western countries to form a collective tone against China, but it is unable to impose its most extreme views as G7’s uniform outlook or the West’s in general. CNN reported that the seven leaders aired serious differences over how best to approach China during a session of the G7 summit. German, Italian and European Union leaders in particular, opposed dealing with China in a confrontational manner. The final communiqué was clearly a product dominated by Washington, yet was a compromise by all. This should be seen as a fruitful start for the US to rally its allies against China. It foreshadows the future of greater pressure on China’s diplomacy from the US through Western platforms. It is anticipated that Washington will make more efforts to make its crackdown on China look like a Western coordinated move, and the possibility of other Western countries directly or tactfully supporting its future anti-China policies will increase. But China doesn’t need to be intimidated by such a scenario at all. In fact, the West has mostly been “united” when it had conflicts with China in the past over ideological issues such as human rights.
–The Daily Mail-Global Times News Exchange Item
