China condemns US ‘small circle’ diplomacy ahead of G7

A top Chinese diplomat on Friday condemned Washington’s “small circle” diplomacy, state media reported, in a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as G7 leaders met for their first in-person summit in nearly two years.

Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Communist Party’s chief diplomat, told Blinken that “genuine multilateralism is not pseudo-multilateralism based on the interests of small circles”.

“The only genuine multilateralism is that founded on the principles of the charter of the United Nations and international law,” Yang told Blinken, in their first one-on-one talks since acrimonious China-US discussions in Anchorage in March.

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The call came as the leaders of the G7 group — the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan — met Friday in Cornwall, England, with the challenge posed by China top of the agenda.

The US administration of Joe Biden has maintained a firm line against China, and hopes to rally allies to counter Beijing on trade, technology and human rights — particularly in the restive region of Xinjiang, where Washington has accused China of genocide.

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Yang on Friday hit back against those claims, urging the United States to “resolve its own grave human rights violations and not use so-called human rights issues as a pretext to arbitrarily interfere in the internal affairs of other countries”.