{"id":702886,"date":"2026-06-14T03:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T03:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/702886\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T03:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T03:59:09","slug":"trump-and-other-g7-leaders-are-meeting-without-china-is-that-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/702886\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and other G7 leaders are meeting without China. Is that a mistake?"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS \u2013 From the outset, China wasn’t included when major powers gathered in 1975 at a chateau outside Paris to fix the slumping global economy, the first of what have become annual summits by the G7<\/a> club of wealthy nations to forward their interests.<\/p>\n

No surprise there. Imagining Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong brainstorming with U.S. President Gerald Ford and other leaders would have been unthinkable.<\/p>\n

China was in turmoil, nowhere close to becoming the economic giant it is now. Mao had also helped defeat France<\/a> and U.S. forces<\/a> in Vietnam, by militarily supporting Ho Chi Minh’s communists that took power. So Mao would have been the odd man out had he been at the inaugural Rambouillet summit of six nations, growing into the G7 when Canada joined the following year.<\/p>\n

But as U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> and his G7 counterparts gather again in France from Monday, China\u2019s exclusion from the informal club’s summits also looks odd, given its now immense sway over the world’s economic well-being and affairs. <\/p>\n

Put simply: Without China, does the G7 make sense? <\/p>\n

Here’s a closer look:<\/p>\n

By the numbers, China would be a shoo-in <\/p>\n

If determined only by economic success, China would already be in the club.<\/p>\n

Its economy, swollen by decades of growth since Mao’s death<\/a> in 1976, now dwarfs those of G7 nations Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada \u2014 leaving only the United States to catch. By this measure, a G7 summit without China is arguably like a soccer World Cup<\/a> without 5-time winner Brazil. <\/p>\n

From being \u201conly a tiny, benign, panda bear\u201d in 1975, \u201dChina has become a great global dragon,” says John Kirton, a University of Toronto specialist on the G7.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many understandably ask: Would the G7 and the global community be better off if China became a member of the G7 club? A plausible answer is \u2018Yes.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

But it’s only for democracies<\/p>\n

A year ago, Trump mused about possibly expanding the club to include China, saying \u201c it\u2019s not a bad idea<\/a> ” when a journalist asked him.<\/p>\n

But an unwritten G7 rule has always been that it’s only for democracies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are each responsible for the government of an open, democratic society, dedicated to individual liberty and social advancement,\u201d the founding leaders declared in Rambouillet in 1975.<\/p>\n

China wouldn\u2019t have cleared that bar then, during Mao\u2019s rule that claimed many millions of lives through famine and revolutionary upheaval.<\/p>\n

Nor, under President Xi Jinping<\/a>, would China do so now. By multiple measures, including the annual Freedom in the World study the World Press Freedom Index or the Canadian Fraser Institute’s ranking of economic freedom, China lags far behind G7 nations for civil liberties.<\/p>\n

China a priority subject for the G7<\/p>\n

China\u2019s clout impacts all G7 countries, in myriad ways. It sells far more goods than it buys, announcing a record trade surplus<\/a> of almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, which is a source of friction with other industrial powers. It controls supplies of crucial rare minerals<\/a>. Its technological advances and growing military strength are giving rivals cold sweats.<\/a> And it is the world\u2019s biggest emitter<\/a> of climate-warming pollution<\/a>. <\/p>\n

All this means that China will be an elephant in the room at the Monday-to-Wednesday summit in the Alpine spa town of Evian-les-Bains. <\/p>\n

As host, French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> has carved out time for the leaders to talk about how to rebalance trade with China, amid fears that soaring Chinese exports of cars<\/a> and other products could wreck G7 industries.<\/p>\n

The chemistry between Trump and other G7 leaders has been bad of late<\/a> \u2014 over the Iran war<\/a> and other bones of contention \u2014 but China could be an issue that unites them, said C\u00e9dric Dupont, who specializes in international politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey agree on the same thing, you know: China is a problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Beijing looking on warily <\/p>\n

China’s Communist Party-led government has in the past criticized the G7’s exclusiveness and painted it as a relic of the Cold War when the world was more divided along ideological lines.<\/p>\n

But in a statement to The Associated Press ahead of the Evian gathering, the Chinese Foreign Ministry took a more nuanced view, saying \u201cthe G7 should serve as a catalyst for solidarity and cooperation rather than an amplifier of division and confrontation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beijing-based analyst Wang Zichen says that \u201cBeijing is wary of the G7 because it sees the group as structurally aligned with U.S.-led Western power, and increasingly as a venue where China is discussed as a challenge or threat.\u201d <\/p>\n

But Chinese leaders cannot ignore it. <\/p>\n

\u201cChina recognizes that the G7 still represents a very significant concentration of economic, technological, military and financial power,” said Wang.<\/p>\n

China seen as a threat to G7 cohesion<\/p>\n

Analysts say that admitting China into the club could wreck its cohesion, not only because Beijing\u2019s authoritarian system of government, interests and its positions on Russia, Iran and other major issues don\u2019t align with those of G7 democracies but also because its presence could test their long-standing alliances.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina inside would indeed be a Trojan horse,\u201d said Kirton. With a Chinese leader at the table, \u201cindividual members might be tempted to break G7 ranks to secure special favors from him on the economic, critical minerals, digital technology and other issues they address.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Alden, an international relations expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that adding China \u201cwould make it very difficult for it to function.\u201d <\/p>\n

Russia’s example is also a barrier to China<\/p>\n

The G7’s last expansion \u2014 accepting Russia as a member in 1998 \u2014 didn’t end well. <\/p>\n

The club froze out Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> when he seized Crimea<\/a> from Ukraine in 2014, foreshadowing the full-scale war<\/a> now raging since 2022.<\/p>\n

Trump said last year that excluding Russia \u201cwas a very big mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Kirton said the experience convinced other leaders “that they should never take a chance on a less than fully democratic power becoming a full member of their fully democratic club again.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu and E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2013 From the outset, China wasn’t included when major powers gathered in 1975 at a chateau outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,28,12,5607,3502,451,3,452,453,6508,303851,965,6132],"class_list":["post-702886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-gerald-ford","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-wang-zichen","tag-world-news","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}