China topped the agenda at Tuesday’s G7 foreign ministers meeting in London, the first time envoys from the world’s seven wealthiest countries have met in person since the COVID-19 outbreak.
The ministers spent two hours, four times longer than other topics, discussing how to form a united front to address China’s growing influence around the world and reassert what U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says is the “international rules-based order.”
No specifics emerged from the meeting, but officials contend that an initial consensus among wealthy democratic states is beginning to emerge. “It’s fair to say that we see eye-to-eye on the need to stand up for our values,” said British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in reference to the G7 and China.
If the G7 is able to mobilize and implement programs designed to confront what they deem as Chinese assertiveness, it’s likely that some, if not most, of that effort will take place in the Global South. Infrastructure development, in particular, is an area that both these foreign ministers and their respective presidents and prime ministers have identified as a potential area to compete directly with the Chinese and form some kind of Belt and Road alternative.
While many developing countries would eagerly greet new infrastructure development partners, it will not be easy for the U.S., Europe, and Japan to compete directly with the Chinese, warned Gyude Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington and the former public works minister of Liberia. “Any Western alternative will face such significant constraints, it is difficult to see if such an initiative ever takes off,” he wrote in a long Twitter thread on Tuesday in response to the G7 talks.
