- G7 faces Belt and Road Initiative with counter-initiative
- Pharmaceutical companies develop cancer drugs
- Agnes Chow released from prison
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The G7 was first pronounced dead, then suffered the contempt of the previous US president. With Joe Biden, they are now experiencing a new beginning as an influential summit format. The main topic on the weekend was China. The old industrial nations want to move closer together to counter the Belt and Road Initiative with their own projects, reports Felix Lee. This may well have positive effects: Competition stimulates business. China and the West are now vying for investment in the Global South. At the same time, the nervousness of the G7 shows the economic and technical level that China has already reached.
This way, the Chinese industry is now advancing into spheres where Western competition felt safe until recently. China is becoming a world-class player in cancer therapies, as Frank Sieren reports. Not only are the drugs similarly good, but they may also be cheaper in the future. This also opens up opportunities in the German market. After all, health insurance companies must economize.
Agnes Chow is free for the time being. The Hong Kong activist has spent six months and 20 days in detention. Her crime: She helped organize a protest. However, her release is now by no means a positive sign, but only an interim status. China’s security law has relegated Hong Kong’s basic rule of law to the second tier. According to Instagram, the brave activist herself is now one thing above all: exhausted.
Finn Mayer-Kuckuk
Feature
G7 faces Belt and Road Initiative with counter-initiative
Seven good-humored heads of state and government, plus the President of the EU Commission and the President of the EU Council, are on a podium on Cornwall beach and beam into the cameras. In the middle stands Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, host of the summit, arms wide open as if to signal: We’re all in agreement. There is a general harmony, hardly any bickering: After the G7 was on the verge of splitting in the Trump era, the Western economic powers are presenting themselves as reborn at their summit.
But the impression is deceptive. Behind the scenes, there was friction. Especially on the topic of China, which the new US administration under Joe Biden, but also Great Britain and Canada put on the summit agenda as a top issue, the governments were at odds until the very last day. The biggest blocker this time was the German government.
After a long struggle, the governments of the US, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Canada and Italy have agreed on a tougher course toward China. In the final declaration of their summit, they spoke out clearly against unfair trade practices and human rights violations in the Uyghur province of Xinjiang, but also against the harsh approach of the Chinese leadership in Hong Kong toward the democracy movement.
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