G7 seeks common front on China in first talks since pandemic

LONDON (AFP) — The Group of Seven wealthy democracies on Tuesday discussed how to form a common front towards an increasingly assertive China in the foreign ministers’ first in-person talks in two years.

Backing U.S. President Joe Biden’s calls for a deeper alliance of democracies, host Britain invited guests including India, South Korea and Australia for parts of the talks in central London stretched out over three days.

The foreign ministers welcomed one another with COVID-friendly elbow-bumps and minimal staff as they gathered at Lancaster House, a West End mansion, for a day largely devoted to China — whose growing military and economic clout and willingness to exert its influence have increasingly unnerved Western democracies.

“It is not our purpose to try to contain China or to hold China down,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who also met Tuesday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“What we are trying to do is to uphold the international rulesbased order that our countries have invested so much in over so many decades to the benefit, I would argue, not just of our own citizens, but of people around the world — including, by the way, China,” Blinken told reporters Monday.

A senior U.S. official said after Tuesday’s session that there had been “no real disagreement of any meaning” within the G7 on China or other issues.

The ministers all voiced alarm about China’s human rights record, amid outrage over the mass incarceration of Uyghur Muslims, as well as on Beijing’s “coercive” economic policies towards other nations, the official told reporters.