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When it comes to China, nothing is black or white.

The Group of Seven summit in the U.K, followed by today's NATO meeting in Brussels and European Union-U.S. talks tomorrow, will be one giant reminder of that. At each stop, President Joe Biden and other leaders will be wrestling with the question of how to balance ties with Beijing.

The mantra from the G-7 will be repeated throughout: cooperate with China on areas of common interest, compete economically, and challenge it on issues including human rights in places like Xinjiang.

That's multiple goals for an already very complicated relationship.

As we saw at the English seaside at the weekend, countries differ on what exactly it means to both compete and cooperate with China.

Much depends on their individual economic imperative. Some are hesitant about being seen as part of an anti-China bloc.

There is also a wariness about automatically aligning with the U.S. — even with Donald Trump out of the picture. Italy and Germany were annoyed behind the scenes at the G-7 over America's push for group "initiatives" including yet another task force on China. And two key U.S. allies — South Korea and Japan — are sniping at each other again, diluting the prospect of collaboration on Beijing.

Countries are clearly concerned about China's growing clout but stuck on how to deal with it. NATO also sees China's military expansion as a worry, though it has other problems in its backyard like Russia.

Beijing for now doesn't seem all that ruffled by the attention. As leaders met in Cornwall, its embassy in London put out a statement that said the days "when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone." Rosalind Mathieson

President Xi Jinping on a screen in Kashgar, in China's western Xinjiang region.

Photographer: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

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Global Headlines

Reality check | The G-7 summit couldn't paper over divisions on issues from climate change to Brexit. Flavia Krause-Jackson, Arne Delfs and Ania Nussbaum look at how the talks among leaders who had either never met, hadn't seen each other for a while or were new on the scene unfolded and could serve as a blue-print for international gatherings in the post-pandemic age.

  • The G-7 fell short on an initial pledge to donate 1 billion additional vaccine doses to other countries.
  • The U.K. attacked the EU in a spat over enforcing Brexit deal provisions for checks on goods entering Northern Ireland.

Talking tough | Benjamin Netanyahu, unseated in Israel after a bruising, two-year battle to hold on to power, is already plotting a comeback, Yaacov Benmeleh reports. He was voted out yesterday after 12 years in office, replaced by a shaky alliance with the hard-right Naftali Bennett as prime minister. In his final moments as leader, Netanyahu gave a pointed warning: "We'll be back — soon."

Aiming low | With both sides agreeing U.S.-Russia ties are at a post-Cold War low, there's no expectation of a strategic breakthrough when Biden and Vladimir Putin sit down in Geneva on Wednesday. As Nick Wadhams, Jennifer Jacobs and Ilya Arkhipov report, they share a modest objective for the meeting: to make sure relations don't get any worse.

Another delay | U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce today he will delay for as long as a month a plan to fully lift England's pandemic restrictions, given a rise in Covid-19 cases. The surge in the delta variant first identified in India has forced a rethink of the schedule to end social distancing rules on June 21.

European fears that the pandemic will lead to permanent damage across the labor market are starting to seem like more of a bad dream than reality.

On trial | Myanmar's ousted leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is set to appear in court today as her first trial begins on charges brought by the military after it seized power. Suu Kyi and former President Win Myint, in detention since the Feb. 1 coup and facing multiple charges, are expected to testify in person at a special court in the capital.

What to Watch This Week

  • Peru's election limbo continues as Keiko Fujimori refuses to concede defeat to Pedro Castillo, who leads by some 50,000 ballots with all votes counted. She claims the "international left" tried to rig the June 6 presidential vote, without providing evidence.

  • Iran said it reached broad agreement with the U.S. over the lifting of sanctions on its energy sector but warned there was "very little time left" to revive the nuclear deal. Presidential elections are on Friday.

  • President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador may respond today to a report that the fatal collapse of a section of a Mexico City metro was likely due to poor construction while Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard was mayor.
  • Biden's quest to enact his $4 trillion economic agenda enters a new phase today as the House comes back into session and Democratic representatives pressure the Senate to produce a bipartisan compromise.

Thanks to everyone who answered our Friday quiz and congratulations to Chern Faye, who was the first to name Myanmar as the country whose ousted leader was formally charged last week with corruption.

And finally ... The battle against climate change is relying on the same polluting building block that drove the second Industrial Revolution a century and a half ago: steel. Modelling by BloombergNEF shows that to build enough wind turbines to reach net zero emissions by 2050, 1.7 billion tons of steel will be needed. That's enough to make 22,224 replicas of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Solar panels and pylons to expand electricity grids are similarly steel-heavy, Eddie Spence, Sam Dodge and Akshat Rathi report.

An employee takes blast furnace temperature readings during iron production at the Thyssenkrupp metals plant in Duisburg, Germany.

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

 

 

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