/ world today news/ This month saw the meeting of the seven most developed industrial powers, or rather the former ones, because to date the BRICS format generates a larger gross product than the G-7. The meeting was held in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which was destroyed in the Second World War in the only attack with an atomic weapon in history, which was carried out by the United States. This year, the world paid almost no attention to the communiqué of the G-7, which would not have been of interest against the background of the more important geopolitical and geoeconomic processes, if it were not for the particularly fierce attacks on China. According to the reputable Western publication Financial Times, this is the strongest condemnation by the G7 against China so far.
Clearly, this is due to several different factors. One of them is the fact that the G7 are facing an existential crisis about the meaning of their very existence as an organization – their economic weight is increasingly declining, their demographics are lagging behind the Global South and the BRICS group. Moreover, a number of key countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS, and the world media is focusing on the actions of this organization, the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), countries such as China, Brazil, Russia and tnt.
The G7 is supposed to be the group of seven industrial powers, but to date it is more of a group of seven post-industrial powers that are in debt, with very little or no economic growth and colossal demographic problems. Instead of focusing on international cooperation, new forms of production and also diplomacy, they are trying to maintain their leading position through banal methods of the colonial era and the Cold War.
Unlike at one time, when the G7 criticized China for certain things, but because of their dependence on trade with it still did not cross some lines of good tone, today they generally view the PRC as almost an enemy. It is obvious that the United States, which is losing its primacy and hegemony, is the main driver behind the wave of anti-China actions, talk and positions throughout the Western world. In the communiqué of the G-7, China is mentioned 20 times and on all kinds of topics – from Taiwan, the East China and South China Seas to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. By the way, all issues that are internal to China and should not concern the G-7 countries.
But this is not just gross interference in China’s internal affairs, but a very deliberate attempt to create Cold War-like global tensions, clearly aimed at thwarting China’s grand ideas and projects of interconnectedness and partnership across Eurasia , Africa, the Pacific and Latin America.
Today, China is Europe’s largest trading partner, for example, but this does not prevent the United States from pushing the “Old Continent” towards a rift with the PRC. Based on the fact that the severing of ties with Russia has led to slowing growth in Europe, inflation, disrupted logistics chains, energy difficulties, insecurity and social problems, we can only imagine what would happen if the US plan succeeds and the EU does the mistake of breaking with China.
However, the G-7 communique mentioned that the seven countries did not aim to “hurt China”, “separate”, and hoped to “build constructive and stable relations” with it. This more peaceful wording seems to reflect the more balanced positions of European countries, which can only rely on ties with China for some serious foreign trade outside Europe, for major non-European investments, know-how and infrastructure projects.
This, in turn, shows that the Western world is not unified. Until very recently, the will of the USA was the law for the European Union as well, as European leaders themselves have emphasized from time to time. But this is clearly not the case by 2023, because even the Europeans feel that the hegemony of the Americans is coming to an end. Former US allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Brazil, for example, are beginning to orient themselves eastward and toward the multipolar world and the global community of shared destiny (which is Xi Jinping’s idea of a kind of alternative, fairer, and more equal globalization), which has not how not to raise questions in European capitals as well.
After all, the United States not only forced Europe to break with Russia, to give up cheap energy resources (the lifeblood of European energy and industry), but also showed itself to be extremely incorrect and disloyal “partners” after they started selling their natural gas on the Old Continent at 5-6 times more expensive prices than they are in America itself. Another telling lack of true partnership was the non-competitive advantages that the Biden administration created by stimulating high-tech production of electric cars and green technologies on its territory, at the expense of European companies (often with the deliberate aim of “stealing” them from Europe).
And while the G7 engages in anti-Chinese rhetoric, almost every other country in the world seeks partnership and cooperation with China in trade, economy, infrastructure, international relations and diplomacy, education, health care, and now even in the security sphere. Countries in Eurasia, Africa and the Pacific have learned that the major international Western institutions exist to give preferences and non-competitive advantages to the US, Britain and some others, not to promote international cooperation. They also learned that the G7 is primarily a group that protects US interests, not the well-being of the entire international community.
As some Western media have pointed out, this G7 meeting in Hiroshima does not have the glamor of previous meetings. It is, as they write, “a club of lonely hearts”, because in the countries of the club there is social and political discontent, and among themselves distrust and obvious misunderstanding. And while the G-7 engages in anti-Chinese rhetoric, China and its partners are building the history of humanity in the 21st century through interconnectedness, partnership, cooperation and equality in international relations.
Maybe the US and its partners, if they are so afraid of losing influence, should focus on big economic projects like China did with the Belt and Road and maybe stop imposing their policies, culture and views on foreign countries and civilizations? Because the more the G7 countries wag their fingers, the more the Global South consolidates and turns to the Chinese idea of a global community of shared destiny.
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