Blaming China for all intl crises speaks poorly of G7
The recently concluded G7 summit in Italy was much about blaming China for all international conflicts and geostrategic questions ranging from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, South China Sea, climate crisis to cybersecurity and "overcapacity". It was the United States promoting its fabricated international consensus that China should be held accountable for all crises.
It seems that electoral pressures and blind submission to the whims and wishes of the US have significantly dented the abilities of countries to think logically. The posturing in Italy was an attempt to redirect the dissatisfaction of the public and voters in their own countries toward China.
The official communique revealed the G7's hypocritical agenda and the US' hype against China, which is mentioned at least 25 times in the communique text. The theories of "containment", "collapse" and "overcapacity" only promoted notions of bloc mentality and the Cold War. It was the US laying the groundwork for future camp confrontation, protectionism, economic isolation and hegemonic policies in the world.
Ironically, the G7 politically pursued its global divide-and-rule policy by engaging and inviting the Global South countries. Thus leaders from India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Algeria, Kenya and Mauritania were invited.
The communique seems to be heavily influenced by the US' strategic power politics objectives to counter China and Russia, raising concerns about the G7 being used as a tool for US geopolitical dominance.
It is nothing but a "responsibility-shifting" joint statement, which has proved G7 members' inability to think and act independently, and it is a handy tool for the US to engage in global geopolitical competition. Thus it vividly reflects perpetual camp confrontation, always creating disorder, destruction and disharmony instead of law-based world order, development, peaceful coexistence and multiculturalism.
Critical analysis reveals that the G7's attempt to smear China in the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict is a ploy of the US to gain a competitive edge globally. China has nothing to do with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Rather its constructive neutrality tried its best to resolve the issue through rigorous track-II diplomacy. Thus the G7's accusations against China are completely unreasonable and fabricated.
The G7 does not represent the whole world because it represents only 10 percent of the world's population. Its total share in the global economy has been in constant decline and its combined contribution to global economic growth is less than that of China. Interestingly, BRICS has already surpassed the G7 in terms of GDP, industrial growth, supply chain system, economic sustainability and innovations.
Additionally, the G7 further widened the gap between the Global North and Global South by drawing lines in terms of self-centric ideology and values, self-assessed parameters of democracy, inflaming bloc confrontation and creating regional conflicts. The G7 keeps on sending military vessels and aircraft into the Asia-Pacific region to create tensions and arming Taiwan to threaten peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, showing its sick and defeatist mentality.
In recent years, the US has continuously aggregated the concept of national security, economic protectionism and unilateral imposition of sanctions, and intensified its crackdown on Chinese companies, which clearly demonstrates its lower capacity. It has dishonored the principles of free market economy, fair competition and equal opportunity, destabilizing international economic and trade order.
In fact, the G7's "overcapacity "hype about China is unsupported by facts or the laws of the economy. It is just an excuse for protectionism and weakens the global effort for green and low-carbon transition and cooperation on climate response.
Thus the G7's communique is another attempt to make a scapegoat out of China, which is the real champion of peace, stability, sustainability and manufacturing in the world. It fears that mere politicizing and weaponizing trade will achieve nothing but reverse the process of globalization.
The G7 summit has also exposed the intrinsic conflicts, contradictions and challenges within the group, particularly its configuration with US' premeditated plans and the resulting drastic divisions among members. The movement for "European sovereignty" is dying with each passing day unfortunately.
It seems that the G7's DNA has been abruptly decomposed. At past summits, the West's biggest economies talked often about teaming with Beijing to fight climate change, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, but this time all blamed China for international problems, which is surprising. This shows the real color of global politics shifting from international cooperation toward bloc formation, from economic globalization toward economic protectionism, from global green efforts to tariff increase on EVs and solar panels, qualitative industrialization to wrong notions of overcapacity, rule of international law to military misadventures, and from multiculturalism to so-called white supremacy.
The global development, security and civilization initiatives raised by China are winning the hearts of the global majority, as they are the real guarantors of world peace, political stability and economic sustainability.
The author is president of Pak-China Corridor of Knowledge and executive director of the Center for South Asia and International Studies.