President Biden was eager to get off the stage at the Group of Seven summit on Thursday night, clearly a bit annoyed after answering questions about Hunter Biden's conviction and the prospects for a ceasefire in Gaza.
But at the end of a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as the president was speaking carefully about closer ties between China and Russia, he couldn't help but interject: As soon as Zelensky finished speaking, he leaned toward the microphone.
“By the way, China is not supplying weapons to the war in Ukraine; it is supplying the capabilities and technology to build those weapons,” Biden said.
“So this is actually helping Russia,” he said.
China was a lurking presence throughout the G7 summit in Puglia: as the savior of “the Russian war machine,” as the summit's final statement put it, as a growing threat in the South China Sea, and as a mercurial economic actor dumping electric cars on Western markets and threatening to withhold critical minerals needed for its high-tech industries.
The final communique contained a total of 28 references to China, almost all of which described Beijing as a malign power.
The contrast with the depiction of China just a few years ago is stark.
At past summits, major Western economies have frequently spoken about working with Beijing to fight climate change, counterterrorism, and nuclear proliferation. While China has never been invited to the G7 like Russia has (Moscow joined the group in 1997 and was suspended when it annexed Crimea in 2014), Beijing has often been described as a “partner,” a supplier, and above all, a great customer of everything from German cars to French haute couture.
Not anymore. China and Russia have frequently been described in the same breath this year, and in similarly threatening terms, perhaps as a result of their deepening partnership.
A senior Biden administration official who was present at the summit and briefed reporters afterward described discussions about China's role in an increasingly confrontational relationship between the two countries.
“As time goes on, it is becoming clear that President Xi Jinping's objective is China's advantage, from trade to influence on global security issues,” the official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions.
But a new element at this year's summit, one that changed European perceptions, was China's support for Russia. China's role was a topic that barely came up in the past two summits, and when it did, it was mostly about China's top leader, Xi Jinping, exerting a moderate influence over President Vladimir V. Putin, especially when Putin threatened to detonate a nuclear weapon on Ukrainian soil.
This time around, the tone of the statement itself was very different.
“We will continue to take action against Chinese and third-country actors that provide material support to Russia's military, including against financial institutions subject to our legal system and other Chinese entities that facilitate the procurement of goods for Russia's defense industrial base,” the leaders' statement said.
The U.S. had insisted on including the language, pressuring allies to follow Biden's lead earlier this week when the Treasury Department announced several new sanctions designed to sever growing technological ties between Russia and China, but so far few other G7 nations have made similar moves.
There is a growing view within the Biden administration that President Xi Jinping's views on China's role in the Ukraine war have changed over the past year and that China will increasingly support Putin, with whom it has declared an “unlimited partnership.”
Even just a few months ago, most administration officials thought that statement was an exaggeration, and even Biden had publicly expressed doubts about whether the two countries could work together beyond their deep suspicions of each other.
That view has now changed, and some administration officials say they believe Beijing is also trying to block countries from attending peace talks hosted by Zelenskiy. More than 90 countries are taking part in the talks in Switzerland this weekend, but Russia will not be taking part. And China, which expressed interest in various ceasefire and peace proposals a year ago, has said it will not take part.
In the view of Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center in Berlin, China is now opposed to any peace effort in which it cannot play a central role.
“Xi Jinping apparently has no intention of abandoning his troublesome Russian partner or merely paying lip service to supporting Kiev,” Gabuev wrote in Foreign Affairs on Friday. “Instead, China has opted for a more ambitious but risky approach: It will continue to back Moscow and thwart Western-led peace proposals, hoping to use its influence over Russia to bring the two sides to the negotiating table and broker a lasting agreement.”
A U.S. official at the summit said he broadly agreed with Gabuev's assessment but questioned whether China had the diplomatic experience to put it into action.
But the shift in perception of China reaches far beyond questions about the end game of Ukraine. European countries that worried a few years ago that the United States was becoming too confrontational toward China signed a statement this year calling for stronger Western-based supply chains that are less reliant on Chinese companies.
The joint statement also implicitly blamed China for a series of large-scale hacks of critical infrastructure in the United States and Europe, called on China to “uphold its commitment to conduct itself responsibly in cyberspace,” and promised to “continue efforts to disrupt and deter persistent, malicious cyber activities originating from China that threaten the safety and privacy of our citizens, undermine innovation, and put critical infrastructure at risk.”
The infrastructure reference appears to be related to a Chinese program the U.S. calls “Bolt Typhoon,” which U.S. intelligence officials have described as a sophisticated Chinese effort to plant Chinese-made malware in water systems, power grids and port operations in the U.S. and its allies.
Biden administration officials have argued in congressional testimony and interviews that the malware's true purpose was to gain the ability to shut down critical U.S. services in the midst of a Taiwan crisis, delay a U.S. military response and sow confusion among Americans who care more about restarting their water supply than maintaining Taiwan's independence.