Analysis: can the west confront Beijing on trade and human rights and cooperate on the climate crisis?
• G7 summit: latest news and reaction
In an extra-secure, 90-minute session, with the phones and wifi cut off, all designed to block any eavesdropping by a prying foreign state, leaders of the G7, with glorious St Ives sunshine outside, wrestled with an issue that will probably dominate the rest of their political lives – China and the right balance between extreme competition and necessary cooperative coexistence.
Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy director, describes the dilemma as presenting “complex coexistence paradigms”, something of which he says the US has had little previous experience.
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