G7 leaders rival China with grand infra plan

Bloomberg

Group of Seven (G7) leaders debated how strongly to respond to China’s effort to win influence around the world and rebuke it over alleged forced labour practices — with US President Joe Biden taking a more hawkish stance and some other leaders wary of the risk the group is seen as an outright anti-China bloc.
Saturday’s talks at the G-7 summit in southern England have focused in part on China. During that session Biden, along with UK host Boris Johnson and Canada’s Justin Trudeau, pushed for specific, action-oriented measures to counter Beijing, according to a US official.
The leaders plan a coordinated infrastructure initiative for developing countries, as China gains leverage by financing projects beyond its borders.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that she welcomed a task force, but didn’t want to frame it as an anti-China effort.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, talked more about the cooperative nature of the G-7’s relationship with China, the US official said. The leaders all discussed setting up a working group or task force on China.
“This is not about being against something, but for something,” she said.
A European official familiar with the discussions said that all countries had toughened their stance toward China compared to previous G-7 meetings. This official said that Merkel and Draghi had pushed to define what Johnson’s task force would actually do, with the German chancellor suggesting that it needed a positive agenda focused on climate and trade if it is to be embraced by other countries. The person said that that the other leaders, including Johnson, agreed with the points Merkel raised.
The US official downplayed any budding divide, saying the countries all agree on key principles and values. Saturday’s discussion was more about just how forcefully to push back against China, the official said.
Biden, along with Johnson, Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, pushed for plans more explicitly aimed at blunting China’s influence, the US official said. Biden is asking the gathering to condemn what he calls China’s use of forced labour, including the treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority in the western Xinjiang region.
The G-7 will launch a green alternative to China’s Belt and Road trade and infrastructure initiative at the summit, Bloomberg News reported previously. That would provide a framework to support sustainable development and the green transition in developing countries, people familiar with the matter said at the time.
Biden has touted the measure, but Germany is hesitant about the proposal, arguing there are already western actions around the world working to limit China’s advance, one European official said. Germany is also reluctant to pledge a concrete sum for such a project, the official said.
For advocates, the various proposals are designed to offer an explicit contrast between Beijing’s approach to foreign relations and the alternative offered by industrialised democracies, according to two other US officials who briefed reporters on the plans on the condition of anonymity. Biden has in recent months argued the world is at an “inflection point” in a struggle between autocracies and democracies.
China has worked to build international alliances by underwriting infrastructure projects in dozens of countries. It also is sending coronavirus vaccines to the developing world, bolstering its international standing in places like Latin America and Southeast Asia through donations.