From left first row : US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, France's Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, Japan's Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, Germany's Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock, political director of Britain's Foreign Secretary Christian Turner pose with (from left second row) South Korea's Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Sugiono, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Foreign Minister of the Philippines Enrique Manalo for a family photo of the G7 Ministers with Indo-Pacific Countries at the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Fiuggi, Central Italy, on Nov 26, 2024. [Photo/VCG]
Less than two weeks ago, all the leaders of the G7 countries seemed to cast a unanimous vote in favor of resolving common challenges by strengthening international solidarity and upholding multilateralism at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where they vowed to work with other countries to "build a just world and a sustainable planet".
Yet the joint statement released on the conclusion of the G7 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Fiuggi and Anagni, Italy, on Tuesday reveals a different picture — they adopt a divide-and-rule approach to the burning issues in the world today.
The phrases "our commitment" or "we are committed" appear more than 50 times in the document, and "our concern" or "we are (deeply) concerned" over 30 times, highlighting how these countries take it for granted that the world is divided into an innocent "we" and the irresponsible rest, with a different set of standards applied to them.
Taking the China-related parts of the joint statement as an example, China is referred to as a cause for concern about 30 times, in relation to issues ranging from the Ukraine and Korean Peninsula crises to rising tensions in the East and South China seas. The G7 foreign ministers even felt no qualms about interfering in the Taiwan question, and so-called human rights issues in Xinjiang, Xizang and Hong Kong, which are China's internal affairs.
They also had the audacity to call on China "not to conduct or condone activities aimed at undermining the security and safety" of their communities and the integrity of their "democratic" institutions, and "to act in strict accordance with its obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations", even if the statement itself reveals who is guilty of doing that.
Their double standard is also evident in their approach to geopolitical and economic issues, as shown by their expressed concerns about Muslims in Xinjiang and their callousness to the suffering of those in the Middle East.
Calling China's normal trade with its neighbors as evidence of China being a de facto "enabler" of Moscow's "war machine" and Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, they shy away from mentioning their role as the cause of both crises and their prolonging of them.
They also expressed their "deep concern over the increased use of dangerous maneuvers and water cannons" in the South China Sea, but fail to mention that they have encouraged the Philippines to repeat its "I came, I grounded, I stole" trick of beaching an old battleship on a Chinese reef to create a fait accompli illusion that the reef and surrounding waters belong to it.
They called on China to refrain from restricting exports of essential materials and goods while defending their own right to do so under the excuse of "de-risking", alleging that China's moves are "economic coercion", while theirs are a "necessary and appropriate" response to the former. While "recognizing the importance of China in global trade", they accuse it of not playing by the rules, even though it is they that pick and choose the rules which they will abide by and which they will ignore. Which country started the trade war, and which countries are blindly following suit are also not something they want to draw people's attention to.
Although the G7 has worked hard to sugarcoat its statement, as evidenced by some rare fluff, such as "we seek constructive and stable relations with China" and "we reaffirm our readiness to cooperate with China to address global challenges", the content of the statement is no different from those of its kind that have been released by the group over the past four years.
Despite that, the group photo of the G7 foreign ministers with the outgoing top US diplomat unusually standing on one end of the line in his last presence at such an occasion, is an intimation of the reality that the rest of the club is waiting to see what the incoming US administration has in mind with regard to its policy toward China.
It is to be hoped that the group's claim that it seeks "constructive and stable engagement with China" and its affirmation that it is willing to work with it to address global challenges will not be just hollow words.
