HIROSHIMA, Japan — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived here Saturday for a dramatic last-minute visit to the Group of Seven summit of powerful democracies as President Biden sought to mobilize allies against a rising China’s growing political, military and economic power.
Zelensky’s trip, which had become public only a day before, immediately overshadowed the leaders’ efforts to focus on issues beyond Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. But it underlined the summit’s broad theme of democracies standing up to autocracies, as Biden and his counterparts highlighted Moscow and Beijing as twin threats to a democratic world order.
In their joint statement, the G-7 nations — which comprise Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union — sought to project unity on a range of global challenges. It was clear that supporting Ukraine and countering what they called China’s economic coercion remained the top priorities, and leaders specifically called out China for not playing an active role in ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“We call on China to press Russia to stop its military aggression, and immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine,” the leaders wrote in the communiqué. “We encourage China to support a comprehensive, just and lasting peace based on territorial integrity and the principles and purposes of the U.N. Charter, including through its direct dialogue with Ukraine.”
The joint statement, which also said the countries seek to have “constructive and stable relations with China,” came on the second day of a summit that has been largely oriented around Ukraine and its fight against Russia.
Zelensky, continuing his flurry of international travel in recent days, arrived on a French government plane after visiting Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, to speak at an Arab League meeting. His visit to Hiroshima, the site of nuclear destruction in World War II, came as he warned against modern-day nuclear threats by Russia.
“Japan. G-7. Important meetings with partners and friends of Ukraine,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter after he landed in Hiroshima. “Security and enhanced cooperation for our victory. Peace will become closer today.”
Biden is likely to meet with Zelensky, who won a significant victory when White House officials on Saturday confirmed they were going to allow allied nations to send F-16s to Ukraine and the United States would train Ukrainian pilots to fly the Western fighter jets. For months, the Ukrainian leader has been requesting the advanced aerial capabilities to bolster his country’s counteroffensive.
“We have delivered what we promised,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters Saturday. “We have given Ukraine what it needs based on close consultations between our military and theirs. And now, we have turned to discussions about improving the Ukrainian air force as part of our long term commitment to Ukraine’s self-defense.”
Sullivan described the training — which is a significant reversal for Biden, who earlier dismissed the need of the fighter jets — as a logical next phase in the war, after providing artillery, tanks, and other arms.
Before Zelensky’s arrival, the leaders spent much of the day focused on economic security, an all-but-explicit effort to push back on China’s economic influence.
In response, Beijing lambasted the G-7 leaders in a forceful statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday evening, telling the G-7 countries to “focus on solving your own problems.”
“The era when a few developed countries in the West willfully interfered in the internal affairs of other countries and manipulated global affairs is gone forever,” said the statement.
Beijing turned the accusations of economic coercion against Washington for its use of sanctions, but did not explicitly mention the war in Ukraine, which China’s top leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly claimed to be in a position to mediate.
The statement of unity among the leaders on China comes after French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to China last month on a three-day trip that drew the ire of allies around the world. In particular, Macron sparked controversy after telling reporters during the trip that Europe should not get “caught up in crises that are not ours” in reference to concerns about China’s activity around Taiwan.
Sullivan, however, downplayed any concerns about fissures in the alliance over China. He said Biden and Macron had “a very good, constructive conversation” after the French president’s trip and maintained the communiqué’s language on China should come as no surprise.
“The statement didn’t happen by accident or osmosis,” Sullivan told reporters Saturday. “It happened because we have had intensive consultations with our partners about the PRC and about how we approach that relationship in an effective and managed way.”
U.S. officials said Biden expects to engage with Xi in the coming months, but they have yet to specify the timing of a meeting or phone call. The relationship between the United States and China seemed to be charting a new course after the two leaders met in November on the sidelines of the Group of 20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia and deputized their staff to work together on a range of issues.
But those efforts stalled in February after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted floating across the country before being shot down by the United States off the Atlantic Coast, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded by canceling a trip to Beijing.
The relationship remains tense, and analysts say the possibility of progress that came out of the Biden-Xi meeting six months ago has largely evaporated. Some worry over the increasingly tense rhetoric, and the expectations that positions will harden in a 2024 U.S. presidential campaign in which anti-China rhetoric is likely to escalate.
Biden has offered very little public commentary during the trip, often seen only posing briefly for photos with leaders of other countries. When pressed about the lack of media access, a senior administration official said that much of that was determined by the host country, Japan.
Biden is scheduled to hold a news conference on Sunday before returning back to Washington.
The U.S. president had initially planned for a longer and more ambitious trip aimed at countering China, but he canceled stops in Papua New Guinea — where he was set to become the first U.S. president to travel to the country — and Australia to return to Washington to focus on talks with congressional leaders over raising the government’s debt limit and avoiding a potentially catastrophic default.
That cancellation forced a flurry of efforts to limit the potential damage and any questioning of the U.S. commitments to the Indo-Pacific. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is now traveling on Sunday to Papua New Guinea, where he will meet with Prime Minister James Marape and sign a bilateral defense cooperation agreement and a bilateral maritime security agreement.
Biden on Saturday night hosted a brief meeting with the Quad — a group that also includes leaders from Australia, Japan and India — instead of the more robust meeting that had been scheduled in Australia.
Early in the meeting, Biden thanked the leaders for “accommodating the change in location.”
As a part of an effort to counter the influence of China and Russia, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has sought to appeal to emerging and developing nations with deepening economic and security ties to Beijing and Moscow. China has invested heavily into its trade relations and infrastructure projects with South American and African countries and Russia’s military and political influence is growing rapidly throughout Africa.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered deep alarm in Japan, which saw it as a warning that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan could also be a reality. Japan is increasingly positioning itself as a regional leader in promoting a “free and open Indo-Pacific” united in shared values of sovereignty and opposition to changing the status quo by force. Kishida has repeatedly warned that Russia’s invasion could lead to ramifications in East Asia, saying, in a veiled reference to China: “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow.”
Japan has been forging deeper relations with Southeast Asian nations with economic and security ties to China, while also balancing its own economic interests with China, its biggest trading partner.
Kishida and Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi have also been extending their outreach to Latin American and African countries in recent months. This weekend, Japan hopes to rally other world economic powers to demonstrate their commitment to supporting those nations as they face skyrocketing food and energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, climate change and infrastructure needs.
To that end, Tokyo has invited Comoros, this year’s Africa Union chair, and Brazil to the G-7 summit. In addition, Japan has invited Quad partner countries India and Australia; the Cook Islands, the chair of the Pacific Island Forum; Indonesia, chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; Vietnam; and South Korea.
Global challenges “cannot be addressed by the G-7 alone, and must be addressed in cooperation with our partners in the international community, including the countries of the Global South,” Kishida said in a news conference Friday evening, using a terminology that groups together a broad swath of dozens of emerging and developing nations.
“As G-7, we hope to demonstrate that we will make a positive and concrete contribution considering the needs of the respective countries through a people-centered approach,” Kishida added.
