China's Top Diplomat Slams "small Circle" G7 Talks

China's top diplomat on Friday condemned Washington's "small circle" diplomacy, state media reported, in a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as G7 leaders met for their first in-person summit in nearly two years.

Yang Jiechi, the Communist Party's chief diplomat, told Blinken that "genuine multilateralism is not pseudo-multilateralism based on the interests of small circles".

"The only genuine multilateralism is that founded on the principles of the charter of the United Nations and international law," Yang told Blinken, in their first one-on-one talks since acrimonious China-US discussions in Anchorage in March.

The US State Department said Blinken expressed concerns over what it called the deterioration of democratic norms in Hong Kong and the "genocide" of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It also called on Beijing to stop its pressure campaign against Taiwan and to release "wrongfully detained" US and Canadian citizens, it said.

The call came as the leaders of the G7 group – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan – met on Friday in Cornwall, England, with the challenge posed by China top of the agenda.

The US administration of Joe Biden has maintained a firm line against China, and hopes to rally allies to counter Beijing on trade, technology and human rights – particularly in the restive region of Xinjiang, where Washington has accused China of genocide.

Yang on Friday hit back against those claims, urging the United States to "resolve its own grave human rights violations and not use so-called human rights issues as a pretext to arbitrarily interfere in the internal affairs of other countries".

The US State Department said the two diplomats discussed North Korea policy and stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency in probes of the origins of Covid-19 and also discussed a range of other sensitive topics.

"Addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, the Secretary stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency regarding the origin of the virus, including the need for WHO Phase 2 expert-led studies in China," it said, referring to the World Health Organisation.

A report on the origins of Covid-19 by a US government national laboratory concluded the hypothesis of a viral leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan was plausible and deserved further investigation, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday.

"We urge the United States to respect facts and science, refrain from politicising the issue ... and focus on international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic," Yang said. (AFP/Reuters)