Source: wechat official account: Bu Yidao has been authorized to reprint
Pen / Sword smile & Sister Daodao
Today, Biden flew to Bavaria, Germany by air force one, and two “heavyweight” summits in the west, which have been long publicized, came on stage one after another.
In addition to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which is a top priority for the United States and Europe, the “China threat” has not surprisingly been rendered a key issue. The ongoing G7 summit will not only launch the new global infrastructure partnership plan benchmarking to the “the Belt and Road” initiative, but also discuss China’s so-called “forced labor” and “intellectual property theft”.
The NATO summit made it clear in advance that “China” was written into the latest version of NATO’s “strategic concept” document for the first time, and the intention to confront China was quite obvious.
Also of great concern is that the leaders of four Asia Pacific countries, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will also appear at the NATO Madrid summit. Among them, Japan and South Korea also participated for the first time.
Does this information indicate that the process of NATO’s pacification is accelerating significantly? Will Biden, with his mess behind him, gain more “unity” with his European and Asia Pacific allies in Europe?
01
“The group of seven will jointly announce that we will ban the import of Russian gold.”
The G7 summit has just opened today. Biden has been impatient to make such a forecast on twitter, which has confirmed the previous media speculation.
In addition to the “gold ban”, the G7 summit is expected to discuss plans to replace Russian oil and gas imports, as well as other specific proposals to “increase pressure on Russia and show support for Ukraine”.
As the host and German Chancellor Scholz said, this year’s G7 summit is to “convey the message that NATO and the G7 are more united than ever” on the issue of Ukraine.
However, the gold content of this “unity” is worth discussing, especially Russia holds Germany’s main energy supply.
No, just after Russia announced that it would stop gas supply for 10 days and carry out annual maintenance on the “beixi-1” gas transmission pipeline, Berlin began to worry that Russia might completely cut off its natural gas supply to Germany, so it took a “desperate” approach and issued an emergency decree to allow the federal government to resume coal-fired fuel oil power generation in case of natural gas shortage.
At the expense of their own interests to safeguard American hegemony, European countries should be clear about how to calculate this account.
China is another theme of this year’s G7 summit.
It has been announced in advance that the United States “will arrive in Bavaria to attend the G7 summit with the most severe script against China”.
As far as the current media exposure is concerned, the “most severe” is roughly divided into two aspects:
The first is “batch”.
According to a Reuters report from us air force one, on Biden’s way to Germany, the White House announced that the G7 would discuss China’s so-called “forced labor” and “stealing intellectual property rights”.
The G7 summit last year actually talked about similar topics.
The leaders’ communique after the meeting publicly criticized China by name on the issues of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and also required who to carry out the second stage investigation on the origin of novel coronavirus “in a timely, transparent, expert led and science based manner”.
However, on the issue of human rights in China, last year’s communique only vaguely “called on China to respect fundamental freedoms”; On the issue concerning Xinjiang, there is no consensus on prohibiting countries from participating in projects benefiting from “forced labor”.
This year, we need to go a little further, that is, the wording of China will be stronger?
In fact, the strategic differences between the United States and Europe towards China are insurmountable. The United States wants the west to overthrow China together. European countries and China have ideological differences as well as economic competition and cooperation needs.
Therefore, no matter how tough it is, it is only a “mouthpiece”.
The second is “legislation”.
The United States is expected to make another “tantalizing and ambitious commitment” to the world at this year’s G7 Summit: to launch a “partnership covering global infrastructure, people’s health and digital infrastructure”.
Washington has high hopes for this.
U.S. national security adviser Sullivan said, “this can replace what the Chinese have provided and become another option.” we intend to make this one of the symbols of the Biden administration’s domestic and foreign policy for the rest of its term. “.
A year ago, President Biden urged G7 leaders to support “rebuilding a better world” (b3w), which aims to replace China’s “the Belt and Road” initiative. Now it seems that the thunder and rain are small.
Will the future be better if the name is changed?
The G7 countries as a whole are facing high inflation and are unlikely to provide a large amount of funds for the new “commitment” of the United States. They say they will “seek the contribution of the private sector”, but so far there is still a lack of specific plans to implement.
Therefore, the new so-called “partnership” is still a glorified “empty check”.
02
After the G7 summit in Germany, Biden will run nonstop to the next stop of his European trip, Madrid, the capital of Spain. From the 29th to the 30th, the NATO summit will be held there.
Similar to the G7 summit, “responding to China’s threat” is also one of the themes of the NATO summit that have been announced for a long time in advance.
On the 22nd and earlier on the 16th, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has “warmed up” on two different occasions, especially the “China threat”, for fear that the outside world will pay too much attention to the Ukrainian crisis and “forget” China.
Stoltenberg said that the NATO Madrid summit will have five focuses, including discussing the continued support for Ukraine, reviewing the accession of Finland and Sweden, and adopting a new “strategic concept” document to guide the development of the next decade.
To sum up, Russia, which started war against Ukraine, is the “most urgent threat”, but China is also one of the “other security challenges that NATO cannot forget”.
In the process of rendering the “China threat” into an “important play”, the NATO summit mainly highlighted two concerns:
First, NATO’s new “strategic concept” document will name China for the first time.
This “first time” was described by us and NATO officials as “a great progress” of NATO. Stoltenberg said he hoped the allies would say that China “poses some challenges to NATO’s values, interests or security”. This sounds like urging the 30 member states to “unite the front”. In fact, it is an undisguised “political declaration” on behalf of NATO, specifically targeting China.
Another concern is that the leaders of four Asia Pacific countries, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, also went to Madrid.
In the NATO 2030 reform plan, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are clearly defined as the four partners of NATO in the Asia Pacific region. So far, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been particularly active. He will also become the first Japanese Prime Minister to attend the NATO summit.
Before leaving for Europe, Hamada had already said that he would “push Japan’s cooperation with NATO to a new stage”.
When announcing the news on the 15th, he said that he would emphasize at the NATO summit that “the unilateral change of the status quo by force is not allowed anywhere in the world”.
It has led the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to the Asia Pacific. This set of tricks has been repeated more than once by Kishida and Japanese right-wing politicians. The NATO summit will become another amplifier for them.
Compared with Japan, South Korea is quite cautious in China related issues.
The South Korean presidential palace tried to get rid of the “suspicion” when introducing the situation on the 22nd, stressing that the South Korean President’s participation in the NATO summit for the first time does not mean that South Korea will turn to the Anti China and anti Russia policy.
However, even some Korean media said that Yin Xiyue’s visit to Madrid would be seen as “a gesture to strengthen the ROK US alliance and cooperate with the US diplomatic strategy”. There are also many voices in South Korea who believe that this has stimulated China and Russia and that “the gains outweigh the losses”.
03
Obviously, Biden wants to brush another wave of “unity” with Europe and even some Asia Pacific allies through the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and playing up the “China threat”. However, as some US media have observed, even European countries do not agree to use tough words against China within the framework of NATO.
They have at least two concerns: first, they do not want NATO to become a “global alliance” and be dispersed; Second, we do not want to explicitly list China as an opponent.
A European scholar said that such differences within the West are becoming more and more obvious.
Although European powers also want to enhance their own influence by virtue of the crisis, they are more inclined to carry out crisis management and control over the conflict between Russia and Ukraine from the perspective of their own interests. They hope to return to the negotiating table with Russia in the future and do not want to go to extremes with regard to China.
However, the United States, Japan and other countries obviously want to use this crisis to create a growing trend of geopolitical confrontation in Europe and the Asia Pacific, and even further expand it. The United States is desperately trying to impose its strategic intentions on its allies and confuse the security issues in Europe and the Asia Pacific, both to bind China and Russia and to bind other allies.
These two divergent trends within the West are in a contest.
When air force one was flying to Europe, many media and observers in the United States and Europe noticed the “troubles” that Biden could not get rid of: high inflation, increased risk of economic recession, the resurgence of conservative politics behind the dispute over abortion rights, and the worrying situation of Democrats in the mid-term elections in November
Under the heavy pressure at home, Biden’s visit to Europe this time “must be more focused on ‘what can I bring back? Rather than’ what can I show the world? ‘ This determined that, as before, he shouted “unity” and continued to push his allies to the forefront to “shelter the United States from the wind and rain”.