On 14 March, two important meetings took place that demonstrated the gulf between the G7 group of countries, on the one hand, and Russia, China, and Iran, on the other, regarding major international issues, mainly the Iranian nuclear programme and how to deal with security issues in the Pacific with special emphasis on the freedom of navigation and security in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
The foreign ministers of the G7 met in Charlevoix in Canada, while in Beijing in China Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi conferred with Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Ryabkov and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi. Their meetings came in the wake of joint naval drills off the coast of the Gulf of Aden between their three respective navies.
In Charlevoix, the G7 foreign ministers said that Tehran is the principal source of regional instability and that it must never be allowed to develop and acquire a nuclear weapon.
The Beijing meeting issued a joint call to end what it termed “illegal sanctions” as well as an end to “threats of force” against Tehran.
The Chinese Foreign Minister called on the United States to resume talks, indirect ones through the European Union, and to show what he called “political sincerity,” expressing the hope that all the concerned parties “will meet each other halfway” and resume dialogue and negotiations as soon as possible. He opposed what he described as the “forced intervention” of the UN Security Council in the question of Iran’s nuclear programme.
This position came as a surprise, bearing in mind the fact that China as a permanent member of the Council had previously voted for resolutions pertaining to this particular question. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the 5+1 nuclear accord with Iran of July 2015, was adopted by the UN Security Council.
As the host of the Beijing meeting, China was trying to send a message to the US administration that diplomacy and not the threat of the use of force is the better alternative in the pursuit of a political solution that would serve the interests of the parties concerned, in this case the US and Iran.
China has no interest in a military conflict between these two countries. The same thing goes for Russia since, regardless of the agreements and strategic partnerships that both Russia and China have signed separately with Iran, Moscow and Beijing have no interest at all in a war between the US and Iran. They do not want to be in a situation where their competing regional and international interests would clash.
The G7 foreign ministers in Charlevoix discussed mutual cooperation to increase security and resilience across the Indo-Pacific region, where they expressed their concerns at China’ s military build-up and the continued increase in the Chinese nuclear weapons arsenal.
They called on China to engage in strategic risk-reduction talks. China has never been a party to talks or agreements that have dealt with strategic weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles, though the former US administration broached the idea of involving China in three-way strategic reduction talks with the US and Russia.
They said that they “remain seriously concerned” by the situation in the East China Sea (the Sea of Japan) and the South China Sea, and they stressed the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, while expressing their opposition to any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion.
They also criticised China’s economic policies, expressing their concerns at China’s “non-market” policies and practices that are leading, according to their joint statement, to harmful overcapacity and market distortions.
Concerning the war in Ukraine, the G7 foreign ministers condemned the “provision of weapons and dual-use components” by China to Russia, describing this as a “decisive enabler of Russia’s war and the reconstitution of Russia’s armed forces.” In a direct threat to China, they reiterated their intention to “continue to take action” against “such third countries,” meaning China and North Korea.
The Chinese Embassy in Canada said in a statement that the G7 was “blatantly smearing China” and that the positions adopted at the meeting were “filled with arrogance, prejudice, and malicious intentions to suppress and attack China.”
The change of administrations in Washington has not, so far at least, changed the dynamics of the relations between the West and China.
* The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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