NIIGATA, Japan (AP) \u2014 Bank runs, cyber security and building more reliable supply chains to ensure economic security were among items on the agenda of closed-door financial talks Friday in Japan by the Group of Seven advanced economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tensions with China, and with Russia over its\u00a0war on Ukraine, loomed large on the wide horizon of issues the G-7 is tackling this year in Japan, its only Asian member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while G-7 finance ministers and central bank chiefs discussed ways to protect the international rules-based order and prevent what they are calling \u201ceconomic coercion\u201d by China, Beijing lashed back, accusing the club of wealthy nations of hypocrisy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China is a victim of economic coercion, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf any country should be criticized for economic coercion, it should be the United States. The U.S. has been overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export controls and taking discriminatory and unfair measures against foreign companies,\u201d Wang said in a routine news briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China accuses Washington of hindering its rise as an increasingly affluent, modern nation through\u00a0trade and investment restrictions\u00a0that the United States says are needed to protect American economic security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking before the talks began, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said such measures are \u201cnarrowly targeted\u201d and focused on national security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not focused on undermining China\u2019s economic competitiveness or preventing them to advance economically,\u201d Yellen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked what G-7 countries mean by trying to prevent \u201ceconomic coercion,\u201d namely by China, Yellen cited\u00a0trade actions by Beijing against Australia\u00a0as one example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere have been examples of China using economic coercion on countries that take actions that China\u2019s not happy with from the geopolitical perspective,\u201d she said. \u201cWe in the G-7 share a common concern with this kind of activity and are looking to see what we can try to do to try to counter this kind of behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China\u2019s relations with the 27-nation European Union, which is also a member of the G-7, have also been frayed by friction over trade and over its tacit support for Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leaders attending the talks in Niigata said they would be considering ways to prevent countries from skirting\u00a0sanctions against Moscow\u00a0meant to hinder its ability to continue the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both the U.S. and European Union maintain they are not advocating \u201cdecoupling,\u201d or dismantling extensive economic ties with China, but support \u201cde-risking\u201d relations to avoid becoming too dependent on China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For its G-7 presidency, Japan has prioritized launching a partnership with low- and middle-income countries to build \u201crobust supply chains\u201d to help cut carbon emissions. One key area of concern for all G-7 countries is the heavy concentration in China of suppliers of rare earths materials needed in many high-tech products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile,\u00a0recent failures of banks\u00a0in the U.S. and Europe have added to the complexity of steering the world economy toward a sustained recovery from the pandemic while cooling inflation that surged to multi-decade highs in the past year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s become clear that financial worries can spread in an instant via social networking sites, and online banking, allowing money withdrawals outside business hours, can cause bank runs,\u201d Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and other lenders stemmed largely from the pressure of interest rate hikes that, by making borrowing more expensive, are designed to slow business activity and cool inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The meetings in Niigata are a good chance to \u201ccompare notes and to see how we can make the world a little bit more stable and reach the price stability that we very much want to arrive at in short order,\u201d Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, said in videotaped comments posted online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overhanging the financial experts\u2019 talks is the question of whether President Joe Biden and Congress will come to an agreement on raising the\u00a0ceiling on the national debt\u00a0before the U.S. government runs out of money to pay its bills.\u00a0Yellen said a default\u00a0on the national debt would be catastrophic and was \u201cunthinkable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A meeting between Biden and lawmakers on the issue was pushed back to May 18 to allow staff talks to continue over the weekend. Administration officials portrayed it as a positive step and it did not appear to indicate a breakdown in talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The three days of talks in this port city on the Sea of Japan are the last in a series of ministerial meetings to prepare for a summit of G-7 leaders next week in Hiroshima.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NIIGATA, Japan (AP) \u2014 Bank runs, cyber security and bui […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2503,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions\/2503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}