G7 summit statement will take aim at ‘challenge China poses’, US national security adviser says

• Beijing’s non-market economic practices, approach to debt and human rights actions set to be addressed in communique issued from meeting in Germany
• ‘We’re not looking for a Cold War, and we’re not looking to divide the world into rival blocs,’ adds Jake Sullivan, noting another Xi-Biden dialogue looms

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has warned the statement coming out of this week’s G7 summit will take aim at China, yet stressed that Western nations sought neither confrontation with Beijing nor to divide the world into rival blocs.

Sullivan made the comments during his trip to Germany with US President Joe Biden as they attended a three-day Group of Seven summit that began on Sunday, ahead of a trip to Spain for a Nato meeting.

“[W]e do think that there is increasing convergence, both at the G7 and at Nato, around the challenge China poses and around the need – the urgent need for consultation and especially alignment among the world’s leading market democracies to deal with some of those challenges,” Sullivan said on Monday.

In particular, the expected G7 communique would address China’s “non-market economic practices, its approach to debt and its human rights actions”, he said, while the Nato strategic concept would address China in “ways that are unprecedented”. The strategic concept is a document guiding the transatlantic security alliance’s political, military and defence developments.

Biden’s wish to align allies and “like-minded countries” to counter Chinese influence has been central to his foreign policy. But Beijing has taken exception to what it sees as an effort to “smear” China, responding to the G7 by asserting the “days when a small group of countries decided the fate of the world are long gone”.

On the first day of the G7 summit on Sunday, Biden announced plans to raise US$600 billion for a G7 initiative – the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment – to blunt China’s global influence through its Belt and Road Initiative, which focuses on building infrastructure in developing nations.

However, Sullivan stated that “competition does not mean confrontation or conflict”.

“We’re not looking for a Cold War, and we’re not looking to divide the world into rival blocs and make every country choose,” he added.

“We want to stand for a set of principles, rules of the road that are fair and understood and agreed by everybody,” Sullivan said. “And we want to ensure that we’re working with like-minded partners to hold China accountable to adhere to those rules.”

When asked about the expected timetable for another official dialogue between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Sullivan said the leaders would “have the opportunity to engage over the course of the next few weeks”.

“It’s not going to be immediately after the G7,” he added, without elaborating.

Ahead of the G7 and Nato meetings, Sullivan held a face-to-face meeting with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Luxembourg on June 13.

Since then, expectations have run high that Biden and Xi will hold talks to tackle issues separating Washington and Beijing: the war in Ukraine, military activities in the Taiwan Strait, and North Korea’s nuclear development.

Biden said earlier he was reconsidering tariffs on Chinese goods that had been adopted during the administration of his predecessor, Donald Trump, as he now faces domestic pressure to tame inflation.

Author: Kinling Lo, SCMP