Top diplomats from G7 nations sought to project unity on China and other issues after French President Emmanuel Macron stirred unease across the bloc with a conciliatory tone on a recent trip to Beijing.
“The last day has only reinforced the convergence of views that we have on the approach to the most important issues of the day,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said alongside French Minister of Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna, following a meeting in the mountain resort of Karuizawa, Japan.
The statement of harmony masked differences behind the scenes that spilled into the open following Macron’s state visit to Beijing, after which he said the EU should avoid being dragged into a dispute with China by the US.
Photo: AP
The trip amounted to a diplomatic coup for Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who has sought to divide the US and its long-time allies.
German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock, who also attended the meetings in Japan, struck a starkly different tone during and after her own trip to Beijing last week.
While Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) sought to impress her, including with a trip from his hometown of Tianjin to Beijing, Baerbock emerged more skeptical with China than before, a person familiar with her thinking said.
Baerbock felt lectured by Qin and was disappointed that China’s leadership was not willing to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as part of a peace plan from Xi that many Western nations see as pro-Russian, the person said.
Baerbock yesterday underscored that Germany would not compromise on its values when it comes to engaging with China.
In response to a question on Taiwan, she said that “Europe won’t look away” if international law is violated.
“I made clear in China: We want to cooperate, we want to be partners, but we are not naive,” she told reporters in Japan.
Baerbock and her French counterpart both briefed their colleagues on Sunday night about their China visits as part of attempt to coordinate messaging on how the EU should approach the world’s second-biggest economy, a person familiar with the calls said.
They agreed on an approach that emphasized trying to cooperate with Beijing wherever possibly, while derisking their economic reliance on China and sending clear signals that Chinese weapon deliveries to Russia — as well as military escalation with Taiwan — would be unacceptable, the person said.
The G7 has translated its close coordination on arming Ukrainian forces over the past year into a renewed dialogue on the challenges presented by China, a senior US Department of State official told reporters yesterday evening.
The group sees the need to stay engaged with China while standing up against any coercive measures or efforts to change the “status quo” in Taiwan, the official said.
Ahead of a G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima, Japan, next month, the foreign ministers also discussed how to provide critical infrastructure investments across the developing world to give countries a high-quality alternative to Chinese investments, the official said.
The ministers agreed at a session yesterday that there should be regular talks within the G7 framework on the Indo-Pacific region to strengthen coordination with Southeast Asian nations and others in the region, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Standing together on China is “extremely important,” Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi said in a statement following a working dinner with other foreign ministers on Sunday night.
Japan and the UK will “continue to coordinate closely in addressing issues related to China,” he said after a bilateral meeting yesterday with British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,
RSS