CARBIS BAY, England: China on Sunday (Jun 13) pointedly cautioned Group of Seven leaders that the days when "small" groups of countries decided the fate of the world was long gone, hitting back at the world's richest democracies which have sought a unified position over Beijing.
"The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone," a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said.
"We always believe that countries, big or small, strong or weak, poor or rich, are equals, and that world affairs should be handled through consultation by all countries."
The re-emergence of China as a leading global power is considered to be one of the most significant geopolitical events of recent times, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union that ended the Cold War.
The G7, whose leaders are meeting in southwestern England, has been searching for a coherent response to the growing assertiveness of President Xi Jinping after China’s spectacular economic and military rise over the past 40 years.
Leaders of the group - the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Japan - want to use their gathering in the English seaside resort of Carbis Bay to show the world that the richest democracies can offer an alternative to China’s growing clout.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau led a G7 discussion of China on Saturday and called on leaders to come up with a unified approach to the challenges posed by the People's Republic, a source said.
The G7 are planning to offer developing nations an infrastructure scheme that could rival Xi's multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.
Beijing has repeatedly hit back against what it perceives as attempts by Western powers to contain China, and says many major powers are still gripped by an outdated imperial mindset after years of humiliating China.
HONG KONG: Hong Kong police arrested at least three protesters on Saturday (Jun 12), the anniversary of protests in 2019 that rocked the financial hub and eventually led to Beijing introducing a security law that critics say has stifled dissent.
The protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct and failing to produce proof of identity, while at least 10 people were summoned for violating a ban on gatherings, police said, after protests in the Kowloon district of Mongkok.
Some people blocked roads by placing rubbish bins and other objects on them, police said.
"The police strongly condemn ... acts endangering public health and safety," police said in a post on Facebook shortly before midnight on Saturday.
The three people arrested were teenagers, aged 15 to 19, police said.
Small groups gathered on Saturday to commemorate the first major clashes between protesters and police two years ago when tens of thousands demonstrated against a proposed law for the former British colony that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to the mainland for trial.
Many Hong Kong residents saw the proposed law as further erosion of the city's special status that was supposed to be guaranteed under a "one country, two systems" formula agreed when Britain handed it over to China in 1997.
The 2019 protests snowballed over subsequent months into a mass movement for democracy that included regular clashes between protesters and police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
Police deployed 2,000 officers around the city on Saturday, the South China Morning Post reported.
Police said on the eve of the anniversary that they had arrested two people on suspicion of promoting and inciting others to join an unlawful assembly. Activist group Student Politicism said two of its leaders were arrested.
CARBIS BAY, England: Leaders of the world's largest economies unveiled an infrastructure plan Saturday (Jun 12) for the developing world to compete with China’s global initiatives, but they were searching for a consensus on how to forcefully call out Beijing over human rights abuses.
Citing China for its forced labour practices is part of President Joe Biden’s campaign to persuade fellow democratic leaders to present a more unified front to compete economically with Beijing. But while they agreed to work toward competing against China, there was less unity on how adversarial a public position the group should take.
Canada, the United Kingdom and France largely endorsed Biden's position, while Germany, Italy and the European Union showed more hesitancy during Saturday's first session of the Group of Seven summit, according to two senior Biden administration officials. The officials who briefed reporters were not authorised to publicly discuss the private meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The communique that summarises the meeting's commitments was being written and the contents would not be clear until it was released when the summit ended Sunday. White House officials said late Saturday that they believed that China, in some form, could be called out for “nonmarket policies and human rights abuses”.
In his first summit as president, Biden made a point of carving out one-on-one-time with various leaders, bouncing from French president Emmanuel Macron to German chancellor Angela Merkel to Italian prime minister Mario Draghi as well as Japan's Yoshihide Suga and Australia's Scott Morrison, a day after meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as if to personally try to ward off memories of the chaos that his predecessor would often bring to these gatherings.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, and US President Joe Biden during the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, Saturday Jun 12, 2021. (Leon Neal/Pool via AP)
Macron told Biden that collaboration was needed on a range of issues and told the American president that “it’s great to have a US president part of the club and very willing to cooperate”. Relations between the allies had become strained during the four years of Donald Trump's presidency and his “America first” foreign policy.
Merkel, for her part, downplayed differences on China and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which would transport natural gas from Russia to Germany, bypassing Ukraine.
“The atmosphere is very cooperative, it is characterised by mutual interest," Merkel said. "There are very good, constructive and very vivid discussions in the sense that one wants to work together.”
White House officials have said Biden wants the leaders of the G7 nations — the US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy — to speak in a single voice against forced labour practices targeting China's Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. Biden hopes the denunciation will be part of a joint statement to be released Sunday when the summit ends, but some European allies are reluctant to split so forcefully with Beijing.
China had become one of the more compelling sublots of the wealthy nations' summit, their first since 2019. Last year’s gathering was cancelled because of COVID-19, and recovery from the pandemic is dominating this year's discussions, with leaders expected to commit to sharing at least 1 billion vaccine shots with struggling countries.
The allies also took the first steps in presenting an infrastructure proposal called “Build Back Better for the World”, a name echoing Biden's campaign slogan. The plan calls for spending hundreds of billions of dollars in collaboration with the private sector while adhering to climate standards and labour practices.
It's designed to compete with China’s trillion-dollar “Belt and Road Initiative” which has launched a network of projects and maritime lanes that snake around large portions of the world, primarily Asia and Africa. Critics say China's projects often create massive debt and expose nations to undue influence by Beijing.
Britain also wants the world’s democracies to become less reliant on the Asian economic giant. The UK government said Saturday’s discussions would tackle “how we can shape the global system to deliver for our people in support of our values", including by diversifying supply chains that currently heavily depend on China.
Not every European power has viewed China in as harsh a light as Biden, who has painted the rivalry with China as the defining competition for the 21st century. But there are some signs that Europe is willing to impose greater scrutiny.
Before Biden took office in January, the European Commission announced it had come to terms with Beijing on a deal meant to provide Europe and China with greater access to each other’s markets. The Biden administration had hoped to have consultations on the pact.
But the deal has been put on hold, and the European Union in March announced sanctions targeting four Chinese officials involved with human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Beijing responded with penalties on several members of the European Parliament and other Europeans critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
Biden administration officials see an opportunity to take concrete action to speak out against China’s reliance on forced labour as an “affront to human dignity".
While calling out China in the G7 communique would not create any immediate penalties for Beijing, one senior administration official said the action would send a message that the leaders were serious about defending human rights and working together to eradicate the use of forced labour.
An estimated 1 million people or more — most of them Uyghurs — have been confined in reeducation camps in China’s western Xinjiang region in recent years, according to researchers. Chinese authorities have been accused of imposing forced labor, systematic forced birth control, torture and separating children from incarcerated parents.
Beijing rejects allegations that it is committing crimes.
Johnson, the summit host, also welcomed the leaders from “guest nations" South Korea, Australia and South Africa, as well as the head of the United Nations, to the summit to “intensify cooperation between the world’s democratic and technologically advanced nations”.
The leaders planned to attend a barbecue Saturday night, complete with toasted marshmallows, hot buttered rum and a performance by a sea shanty troupe.
India was also invited but its delegation is not attending in person because of the severe coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Biden ends the trip Wednesday by meeting in Geneva with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The White House announced Saturday that they will not hold a joint news conference afterward, which removes the opportunity for comparisons to the availability that followed Trump and Putin’s 2018 Helsinki summit, in which Trump sided with Moscow over his own intelligence agencies. Only Biden will address the news media after the meeting.
Putin, in an interview with NBC News, said the US-Russia relationship had “deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years”.
He added that while Trump was a “talented” and “colourful” person, Biden was a “career man” in politics, which has “some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements” by the US president.
BEIJING - Living on 200 yuan (S$41) a month, not working for two years and playing a corpse on television when the mood strikes - such is the life described in a forum post that has gone viral recently, and led to youth in China questioning their choices.
"Tang ping" or "lie flat" is the true measure of life, according to the post in April on search engine operator Baidu's forum site Tieba.
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HONG KONG: The main representative of the Chinese government in Hong Kong said on Saturday (Jun 12) people trying to turn the city into a "pawn in geopolitics" were the "real enemies" and Beijing was the true defender of the city's special status.
Luo Huining, director of China's Hong Kong Liaison Office, told a forum that the financial hub, a former British colony handed over to China in 1997, remained one of the world's most competitive economies, the South China Morning Post reported.
"Those trying to turn Hong Kong into a pawn in geopolitics, a tool in curbing China, as well as a bridgehead for infiltrating the mainland, are destroying the foundation of one country, two systems," Luo said, referring to the formula agreed when Britain handed the city back aimed at preserving its freedoms and role as a financial hub.
"They are the real enemies of Hong Kong's prosperity and stability," he said, without identifying any people or groups.
READ: China says UK sheltering 'wanted criminals' after HK asylum ruling
Luo said the ruling Communist Party was "the creator, leader, implementer and defender of one country, two systems".
Despite such assurances, many Hong Kong residents have over recent years become worried about what they see as attempts by Beijing to curtail its freedoms.
China denies that.
The Liaison Office did not answer calls outside normal business hours to confirm the contents of the speech and it did not immediately respond to faxed questions.
Unease among many Hong Kong residents grew in 2014 when protesters took to the streets to demand universal suffrage. Demonstrations snowballed again in 2019, sparked by opposition to judicial reform that many people saw as a threat to their way of life.
READ: Hong Kong legislature sits without democrats after exodus
Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the city last June stifling the protest movement and raising new concerns about the city's prospects.
The law's supporters say it has restored order and improved prospects for the city's economy, which Luo said was among the world's most competitive despite fears it would deteriorate under Chinese rule.
NEW DELHI: India on Saturday (Jun 12) reported 84,332 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, the lowest in more than two months, data from the health ministry showed.
The South Asian country's total COVID-19 case load now stands at 29.4 million, while total fatalities are at 367,081, data.
Overall, India's cases and deaths have fallen steadily in the past weeks after a surge from mid-March.
Indian hospitals ran out of beds and life-saving oxygen during a devastating second wave of coronavirus in April and May and people died in parking lots outside hospitals and at their homes.
India has the second-highest tally of COVID-19 infections in the world after the United States, but the discovery of several thousand unreported deaths in the state of Bihar has raised suspicion that many more coronavirus victims have not been included in official figures.
The newly reported deaths had occurred last month and state officials were investigating the lapse, a district health official said, blaming the oversight on private hospitals.
Health experts say they believe both coronavirus infections and deaths are being significantly under-counted across the country partly because test facilities are rare in rural areas, where two-thirds of Indians live, and hospitals are few and far between.
Many people have fallen ill and died at home without being tested for the coronavirus.
