During the recently-held Group of Seven (G7) Summit held in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, England, the leaders of the world’s seven largest economies promised to coordinate their response to the challenges posed by China “much much more closely.”
In particular, the group wanted to put out better alternatives to China’s Belt and Road initiative, which is increasing the Asian superpower’s influence in Southeast Asia and Africa, for better or for worse.
“This isn’t about imposing our values on the rest of the world,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters at the end of the summit, “what we as the G-7 need to do is demonstrate the benefits of democracy and freedom and human rights to the rest of the world.”
There are other fields where the groups said they seek to challenge China directly, including human rights issues, particularly the accusations of its maltreatment of its native Uighurs in the Xinjiang Region.
In the unlikely event that this editorial will reach anyone with influence in G7, we would also like to pitch two issues that the group can confront China over.
The first is China’s spurious claim to almost the whole of the South China Sea. Not just their claim over our waters, but also of those countries with islands in that area.
Everyone knows what this issue is about, so we won’t dwell further on that.
The second is COVID-19.
It may be easy to see this as another dig at China, but the truth remains that it has a lot to answer for. Particularly on the origins of the coronavirus and the fact that it tried to cover up the growing emergency of a pandemic back in 2019.
This cover-up resulted in the virus spreading outside of China and into the rest of the world where it still wreaks havoc today.
This, more than anything else, is what the G7 has to get China to answer for.