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Commentary: America -- de facto culprit of multiple global risks

(Xinhua) 09:42, May 23, 2023

HIROSHIMA, Japan, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Uncle Sam found it more difficult than ever to hide its Pinocchio's nose when it attempted to manipulate its G7 allies into fabricating a list of anachronistic provisions on Saturday under the pretext of "de-risking" from China.

The United States, a blatant bully long recognized as the major culprit of multiple global risks and threats, while making high-sounding claims about "promoting a peaceful, stable and prosperous world," is virtually ripping the world apart and jeopardizing other countries' economic growth by wielding its sword of "coercive diplomacy."

In the just-issued G7 Hiroshima Leaders' Communique, the Washington-hijacked summit vowed to intensify all kinds of aid to Ukraine, an adding-fuel-to-the-fire move only to escalate tension in the region and serve its own hegemonic interests.

This is an old trick repeatedly played by the warmongering nation. From the end of World War II in 1945 to 2001, among the 248 armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions of the world, 201 were initiated by the United States, accounting for 81 percent of the total number, according to incomplete statistics cited in a 2021 article by the China Society for Human Rights Studies.

The communique contains comments on the situation in the Taiwan Strait and accusations regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet, which are purely China's internal affairs. The G7 keeps paying lip service to cross-Strait peace, and yet instigates the quiet "Taiwan independence," which in effect connives at, or even emboldens "Taiwan independence" forces, only to severely undermine cross-Strait peace and stability.

The United States, as the most powerful nuclear weapon state, made a fuss over China's nuclear power at the summit rather than pledge "no first use" of nuclear weapons, continued to extend its "nuclear umbrella" in East Asia, posed nuclear proliferation risks by conducting nuclear submarine cooperation project together with Britain and Australia, and turned a blind eye to the ocean release of Fukushima nuclear wastewater.

In Hiroshima, where the United States threw an atomic bomb in 1945, Kiyomi Kawano, a survivor of the A-bomb, told Xinhua that nuclear weapons are something that will exterminate the human race, lamenting that Japan has not yet participated in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

As the biggest saboteur of international law and order, Washington has been touting the so-called "free and open international order," which is nothing but rules made by a dictator featuring the essence of "America First."

In the sphere of political security, the United States has flouted UN Charter provisions like "self-determination," "sovereignty," and "peaceful settlement of disputes" by waging wars and instigating "color revolutions" in areas like the Middle East, as well as scheming to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments and grossly interfering in democratic elections in more than 30 countries. In economy and trade, data show that the United States accounted for two-thirds of World Trade Organization violations, making it the veritable largest global "rule-breaker."

The United States is the economic coercer of the first water in the world. Over the past decades, it has abused massive unilateral sanctions, export controls, and additional tariffs among other means to suppress its potential rivals. Besides, it is obsessive about "long-arm jurisdiction" by enacting laws including the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act" and the "Trading with the Enemy Act" to fleece other economies. Wielding its political and military might, Washington browbeats other countries into taking sides and "decoupling" from China at the cost of financial loss.

G7 members, not to mention emerging countries, are by no means immune to Washington's coercive practices. The Plaza Accord signed in 1985 caused the Japanese economy, then the world's second-largest one, to plummet into its "lost decades," before Germany's Siemens and France's Alstom fell victim to U.S. super-suppression.

Noting that China brings to the world opportunities, stability and certainty, experts pointed out that the essence of the G7 communique is to restrict or even deny free trade, thereby stifling global economic growth, disrupting the global supply chain and impeding economic collaboration.

The United States poses a great threat to global financial stability. On the first day of the G7 Summit, U.S. President Joe Biden was forced to leave in the middle of a dinner discussion and headed to the hotel to deal with U.S. debt issues. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has recently warned that the U.S. government could default as early as June 1 if the debt ceiling isn't addressed, which would potentially cripple the U.S. economy and threaten global financial stability.

Behind the recent U.S. debt crunch, banking crisis, and inflation challenge are its deficit financial policies, aggressive adjustment of monetary policies and extreme political polarization, which have been channeling its own risks to the rest of the world. Worse still, Washington has also been exerting pressure on other nations by threatening to cut off or restrict the supply of U.S. dollars, the world's dominant currency, causing multiple financial shocks.

Parsing what Washington has done will help other nations, within or outside G7, see the true color of the world's sole superpower. It turns out that the de facto black hand behind myriads of misery and suffering long plaguing the world is no one but the United States.

(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)

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