G7 TO CHALLENGE CHINA'S RISE

The Group of Seven nations, after going through fractious summits in the past few years, appear to have sprung back to life as they rallied under the banner of leading democracies that are being challenged by China's rise.

Kyodo News' Miya Tanaka reported that the more than four-decade-old G7 framework will have to come up with concrete and collective actions to follow through on the promises the leaders made during the three-day summit to increase its leverage in shaping the global order.

"I think how we act and whether we pull together as democracies is going to determine whether our grandkids look back 15 years from now and say, 'Did they step up? Are democracies as relevant and as powerful as they have been?'" U.S. President Joe Biden told a press conference after attending the summit in southwestern England.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga separately told reporters, "As the G7, which shares universal values, we would like to lead the international order."

The G7 is facing "a kind of turning point," Matthew Goodman, an expert on international economic policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said, noting that the club of industrialized economies is now putting a new emphasis on its brand as a leading group of democracies.

The forum has apparently received fresh momentum from Biden, who, since taking office in January, has devoted himself to reviving alliance relationships, multilateralism, and the traditional U.S. role of promoting democracy and human rights, in a shift from his predecessor Donald Trump's "America First" policy.

Over the years, the G7 member states -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States -- have seen their influence wane, with China overtaking Japan as the world's second-largest economy and India's economy now almost the size of Britain's.

Adding to concerns, the coronavirus pandemic created a perception that an authoritarian state-controlled economy might be a more effective form of governance than a market economy after China appeared to have managed the disruptions better than most advanced countries, Goodman said.

To make a stronger case that democracies can contribute more to the world than autocracies such as China, the G7 leaders said in a communique released Sunday that it has set a goal of ending the pandemic in 2022, along with pledges to provide 1 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to poorer countries over the next year.

They also agreed to launch a new infrastructure project for the developing world to offer what U.S. officials call a "higher-quality" alternative to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, which critics say is intended to draw countries deeper into Beijing's economic orbit.

Goodman said the communique was a "significant statement of the shared determination" by the group of seven largest advanced market democracies to take on some of the major challenges the world is facing. But he noted that, despite the "big commitments" made in the 25-page document, questions remain on the details of the follow-through.

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