(TibetanReview.net, Jun07’20) – Senior lawmakers from eight democracies including the US have on Jun 5 launched a cross-parliamentary alliance with an agenda to help counter what they say is the threat China’s growing influence poses to global trade, security and human rights.
The launch of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) came as the US struggled to muster a cohesive alliance to take on China’s growing economic and diplomatic clout and as it led foreign governments in condemning Beijing’s move to impose national security legislation on Hong Kong that threatens the city’s autonomy, noted the timesofindia.com Jun 2.
The report cited the alliance as saying its aim was to “construct appropriate and coordinated responses, and to help craft a proactive and strategic approach on issues related to the People’s Republic of China.”
The group is being co-chaired by US Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democrat Bob Menendez, former Japanese defense minister Gen Nakatani, European Parliament foreign affairs committee member Miriam Lexmann, and prominent UK Conservative lawmaker Iain Duncan Smith.
The alliance has said China’s economic rise was putting the global rules-based order under pressure and that countries that had tried to stand up to Beijing had mostly done so alone – and “often at great cost.”
The list of participating nations in the alliance was reported to include the US, Germany, UK, Japan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Norway, as well as members of the European parliament.
Several of those nations were stated to have faced intense economic or political consequences for crossing China’s strategic ambitions.
“The time has come for democratic countries to unite in a common defence of our shared values,” Smith, the UK lawmaker, was quoted as saying.
A commentary on China’s official globaltimes.cn Jun 6 especially targeted Rubio and the US for launching the alliance, saying “they cannot impose any substantive influence on China’s development.”
“By forming the so-called IPAC, these legislators will only humiliate themselves. 120 years have passed, and as the second largest economy worldwide, China and its people will not let the shame of the year 1900 be repeated again on its territory,” the commentary concluded.
