Biden formulates G7 Plan to counter China at ground zero for the Little Boy in Japan

Biden Rallies Allies Against Beijing
Peter Baker and David E. Sanger May 22, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/us/politics/biden-china-g7.html
https://archive.is/xdDoD

President Biden and his allies spent much of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, announcing new arms packages for Ukraine, including a pathway to providing F-16 fighter planes. They spent hours discussing strategy with President Volodymyr Zelensky for the next phase of a hot war started by Russia.

So it was easy to miss Mr. Biden’s prediction on Sunday of a coming “thaw” in relations with Beijing, as both sides move beyond what he called the “silly” Chinese act of sending a giant surveillance balloon over the United States, only the most recent in a series of incidents that have fueled what seems like a descent toward confrontation.

It is far too early to say whether the president’s optimism is based on the quiet signals he has received in behind-the-scenes meetings with the Chinese government in recent weeks.

Mr. Biden’s own aides see a struggle underway in China between factions that want to restart the economic relationship with the United States and a far more powerful group that aligns with President Xi Jinping’s emphasis on national security over economic growth. As this weekend showed, China is enormously sensitive to any suggestion that the West is organizing a challenge to Beijing’s growing influence and power.

So if Mr. Biden is right, it may take a while for the ice to melt.
Facing a new, unified set of principles from the major Western allies and Japan on how to protect their supply chains and their key technology from Beijing — contained in the meeting’s final communiqué — China erupted in outrage.

Beijing denounced what it portrayed as a cabal seeking to isolate and weaken Chinese power. The Japanese ambassador to Beijing was called in for a reaming out, and China moved to ban products from Micron Technology, an American chip maker, on the grounds that its products posed a security risk to the Chinese public. It seemed like exactly the kind of “economic coercion” the world leaders had just vowed to resist.

Mr. Biden often says he has no desire to see a new cold war begin with China. And he points out that the economic interdependencies between Beijing and the West are so complex that the dynamic between the two countries is entirely different from what it was when he was delving into foreign policy for the first time as a newly elected senator, 50 years ago.

The harmony in Hiroshima over developing a common approach, and the blasts from Beijing that followed, suggested that Mr. Biden had made progress on one of his top foreign policy priorities despite underlying tension among the allies. Rather than dwell on their disagreements, the leaders of the major industrial democracies lined up their approach to China in a way that Beijing clearly saw as potentially threatening, some analysts noted after the meeting.

“One indication that Washington would be pleased is that Beijing is so displeased,” said Michael Fullilove, the executive director of the Lowy Institute, a research group in Sydney, Australia.

Matthew Pottinger, a former deputy national security adviser to President Donald J. Trump, and the architect of that administration’s approach to China, agreed. “The fact Beijing was so touchy about the G7 statements is an indicator the allies are moving in the right direction.”

tags: Matthew Pottinger ...there is something fishy about that boy