People rally in a protest against the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, Japan, May 20, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]
The fresh accusations made by the Group of Seven wealthy member nations against China cannot conceal their failures in advancing global governance as well as the G7's declining influence and obsession with fanning bloc confrontation, officials and experts said.
As the annual G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, concluded over the weekend, observers warned that the grouping also outlined the United States-led Western countries' plans to further stir up the Asia-Pacific region politically, economically and militarily.
China was a hot topic in a series of documents adopted by the summit, such as the G7 Hiroshima Leaders' Communique.
Through these documents, the grouping hyped up the Taiwan Strait situation and made accusations regarding the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Xinjiang Uygur and Tibet autonomous regions and China's nuclear power.
Beijing strongly deplores and opposes this and "has made serious demarches to the summit's host Japan and other parties concerned", according to the Foreign Ministry.
"The G7 used issues concerning China to smear and attack China and brazenly interfere in China's internal affairs," said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Saturday.
The spokesperson said that the G7 claimed it was "promoting a peaceful, stable and prosperous world", but "what it does is hinder international peace, undermine regional stability and curb other countries' development".
Noting that the G7 continues to emphasize cross-Strait peace without mentioning the need to oppose "Taiwan independence", the spokesperson said that this "constitutes connivance and support for 'Taiwan independence' forces, and will only result in having a serious impact on cross-Strait peace and stability".
The East China Sea and the South China Sea have remained stable overall, and relevant countries need to "stop using maritime issues to drive a wedge between regional countries and incite bloc confrontation", the spokesperson said.
"The G7 needs to reflect on its behavior and change course", as the world does not accept the G7-dominated Western rules that seek to divide the world based on ideologies and values, the spokesperson said.
Su Xiaohui, an associate research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said the G7's latest comments and documents show that "it is still failing in its role of tackling issues facing the whole of humanity, such as global governance".
"Although Washington has underscored increasing the G7's influence, it has not responded to concerns of the international community, and the grouping has ended up as a key tool for advancing US-driven strategic competition," she said.
"Routinely, the G7 Summit is intended to discuss economic issues, but (Japan), as the host this year, has linked economic topics to politics and security, and the summit's documents involve a lot of content related to politics," said Yang Bojiang, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Japanese Studies.
"By doing so, Tokyo is marching in lockstep with Washington in viewing China as a competitor and a threat," he said.
Yang noted that Japan also invited eight countries — most of them from the Asia-Pacific region — to attend the summit's expanded meeting this year in an attempt to encourage them to take sides and join the US-led coercion against China.
"Prioritizing 'dealing with China' is actually inviting external forces to further interfere in Asia-Pacific affairs and seeking collective hegemony. This will only add to tension and confrontation in this region and sabotage peace and stability here," he said.
On several occasions this year, the G7 also made claims about "economic coercion" that allude to China.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Japan said on Saturday that "in reality, it is the US itself that is engaged in economic coercion", and the US "has so far applied sanctions arbitrarily to the detriment of nearly half of the world's population, and even G7 members such as Japan are not immune".
Observers noted that in parallel with the G7 Hiroshima gathering, the China-Central Asia Summit was held in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, on Thursday and Friday.
The fruitful Xi'an summit issued seven bilateral and multilateral documents and witnessed the signing of over 100 cooperative documents, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang told reporters on Sunday.
"Our cooperation is not directed at any third party, nor is it subject to a third party, we do not engage in closed, exclusive 'small circles', and we oppose bloc politics and Cold War confrontation," he said.
