Isolate China will be ‘impossible and dangerous’, analyst says, as G-7 gets tough on Beijing
US President Joe Biden wants to minimize the risk from China.
Mandel Ngan | afp | beautiful pictures
The G-7 delivered its strongest message yet to China over the weekend, but one analyst warned that isolating Beijing was “impossible” and “dangerous”.
The world’s seven largest economies agreed at a summit in Hiroshima, Japan, to remove risks and diversify their supply chains away from China, amid fears of coercion economy. Western nations are increasingly aware that their economies are heavily dependent on China. The coronavirus pandemic has shed new light on the intricacies of critical supply chains, but the ongoing war in Ukraine has exacerbated this fact.
In a joint statement after the summit, the G-7 said: “Our policy approaches are not designed to harm China, nor do we seek to impede the development and China’s economic progress… At the same time, we recognize that economic resilience requires – taking risks and diversifying.”
After the announcement of the G-7, China summoned the Japanese ambassador and ordered the companies stop buying from US chip maker Micron.
Giuliano Noci, vice-chancellor for China at Politecnico di Milano, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday that the G-7 represents a “authoritarian” stance against China.
“[President Joe] Biden was talking about eliminating risk, not about decoupling. Detachment was the US magic word a month ago, but it’s very clear that, given the role of the Chinese market for some products, with the degree of interweaving of supply chains, it is nearly impossible. to separate. Noci said.
Risk reduction refers to reducing some dependence on China, rather than breaking the relationship altogether.
“It’s clear that isolating China is not only impossible on the one hand, but dangerous on the other,” Noci said.
The shift from the Biden administration perhaps highlights the perception that it will take a lot of effort and economic cost to decouple its economy from China’s.
Figures from the United States Census Bureau show that the United States has recorded a trade deficic in goods with China is about $383 billion by 2022. Data from last year shows one record high in trade between nations and is evidence of the difficulty of separating their economies.
The G-7 leaders went as far as to express their concerns about the situation in the East and South China Seas and support Taiwan’s “unchanged” status quo.
“There is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea and we oppose China’s militarization activities in the region,” they said.
Speaking to CNBC, Noci said “we’re moving beyond a unipolar world” with the US as the superpower and into a bipolar or multipolar world.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that China is the world’s biggest challenge to security and prosperity. The Chinese Embassy in London describes this as “malicious slander despite the facts,” according to Reuters.
