China's absence from G7 summits seems increasingly odd given its global economic influence.
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FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping while leaving after a visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, Friday, May 15, 2026. – From the outset, China wasn't included when major powers gathered in 1975 at a chateau outside Paris to fix the slumping global economy, the first of what have become annual summits by theNo surprise there.
Imagining Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong brainstorming with U.S. President Gerald Ford and other leaders would have been unthinkable.in Vietnam, by militarily supporting Ho Chi Minh's communists that took power. So Mao would have been the odd man out had he been at the inaugural Rambouillet summit of six nations, growing into the G7 when Canada joined the following year.and his G7 counterparts gather again in France from Monday, China’s exclusion from the informal club's summits also looks odd, given its now immense sway over the world's economic well-being and affairs.
If determined only by economic success, China would already be in the club.in 1976, now dwarfs those of G7 nations Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada — leaving only the United States to catch. By this measure, a G7 summit without China is arguably like a From being “only a tiny, benign, panda bear” in 1975, ”China has become a great global dragon," says John Kirton, a University of Toronto specialist on the G7.
“So many understandably ask: Would the G7 and the global community be better off if China became a member of the G7 club? A plausible answer is ‘Yes. ’”But an unwritten G7 rule has always been that it's only for democracies.
“We are each responsible for the government of an open, democratic society, dedicated to individual liberty and social advancement,” the founding leaders declared in Rambouillet in 1975. China wouldn’t have cleared that bar then, during Mao’s rule that claimed many millions of lives through famine and revolutionary upheaval. , would China do so now.
By multiple measures, including the annual Freedom in the World study the World Press Freedom Index or the Canadian Fraser Institute's ranking of economic freedom, China lags far behind G7 nations for civil liberties.of almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, which is a source of friction with other industrial powers.
It controls supplies ofAll this means that China will be an elephant in the room at the Monday-to-Wednesday summit in the Alpine spa town of Evian-les-Bains.has carved out time for the leaders to talk about how to rebalance trade with China, amid fears that soaring Chineseand other bones of contention — but China could be an issue that unites them, said Cédric Dupont, who specializes in international politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute. China's Communist Party-led government has in the past criticized the G7's exclusiveness and painted it as a relic of the Cold War when the world was more divided along ideological lines.
But in a statement to The Associated Press ahead of the Evian gathering, the Chinese Foreign Ministry took a more nuanced view, saying “the G7 should serve as a catalyst for solidarity and cooperation rather than an amplifier of division and confrontation. ” Beijing-based analyst Wang Zichen says that “Beijing is wary of the G7 because it sees the group as structurally aligned with U.S.-led Western power, and increasingly as a venue where China is discussed as a challenge or threat.
”“China recognizes that the G7 still represents a very significant concentration of economic, technological, military and financial power," said Wang. Analysts say that admitting China into the club could wreck its cohesion, not only because Beijing’s authoritarian system of government, interests and its positions on Russia, Iran and other major issues don’t align with those of G7 democracies but also because its presence could test their long-standing alliances.
“China inside would indeed be a Trojan horse,” said Kirton. With a Chinese leader at the table, “individual members might be tempted to break G7 ranks to secure special favors from him on the economic, critical minerals, digital technology and other issues they address. ” Chris Alden, an international relations expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that adding China “would make it very difficult for it to function.
”Trump said last year that excluding Russia “was a very big mistake. ” But Kirton said the experience convinced other leaders"that they should never take a chance on a less than fully democratic power becoming a full member of their fully democratic club again. ”Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu and E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed. Copyright 2026 The Associated Press.
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