China was not included when leaders from major industrial nations first gathered at the Rambouillet summit near Paris, at a time when the country was still recovering from political upheaval and had a much smaller role in the world economy.

Decades of economic growth have transformed China into the world’s second-largest economy and a central player in trade, technology, supply chains and climate policy, prompting questions over whether the G7 can effectively address global challenges without Beijing at the table.

John Kirton, a University of Toronto specialist on the G7, said China’s transformation from a minor economic actor into a major global power had led some analysts to question whether the group would benefit from Chinese membership.

However, the G7 has historically defined itself as a gathering of democracies. Its founding declaration said members represented open democratic societies committed to individual liberty and social progress, a standard that China under both Mao Zedong and President Xi Jinping has not met, according to critics of Beijing’s political system.

China remains a major focus of G7 discussions because of its trade surplus, control of critical minerals, technological advances, military expansion and position as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

French President Emmanuel Macron, hosting the summit in the Alpine town of Evian-les-Bains, has placed discussions on trade relations with China on the agenda as G7 nations examine concerns over rising Chinese exports, including electric vehicles and industrial goods.

Cédric Dupont, an international politics specialist at the Geneva Graduate Institute, said China could become an issue that brings G7 members together despite recent disagreements over issues including the Iran conflict.

Beijing has criticised the G7’s limited membership in the past, describing it as a Western-led grouping, but China’s Foreign Ministry said ahead of the summit that the organisation should promote cooperation rather than division.

Analyst Wang Zichen said Beijing viewed the G7 as closely connected to US-led Western influence and as a forum where China is increasingly discussed as a strategic challenge.

Some analysts argue that admitting China could weaken the group’s unity because of differences over governance, international security and relations with countries such as Russia and Iran.

Chris Alden of the London School of Economics and Political Science said expanding the G7 to include China could make it harder for the group to operate effectively.

The G7’s previous attempt at expansion has also shaped the debate. Russia joined the group in 1998 but was suspended in 2014 after its annexation of Crimea, ending its participation in what had become the G8 format.

Donald Trump has previously argued that excluding Russia was a mistake, but some G7 analysts say the experience has made members more cautious about admitting countries that do not share the group’s political framework.

In commentary carried by state media, analyst Kim Myong Chol said the statement demonstrated that the United States intended to use South Korea as a geopolitical tool in its regional competition with China. He accused Washington of undermining peace and stability in the region.

Brunson made the remarks in a recent interview, where he also described Japan as a “shield” against China’s regional ambitions. The comments have drawn criticism from both North Korea and China.

South Korea’s presidential office said it was aware of the remarks and remained in communication with Washington on related issues. Local media reported that Seoul had conveyed concerns to U.S. officials.

The United States maintains about 28,500 troops in South Korea as part of its long-standing security alliance aimed at deterring threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.

The annual summit, hosted in Singapore and attended by defense ministers, military leaders and security experts from across the Indo-Pacific and beyond, has traditionally provided a platform for senior Chinese officials to outline Beijing’s strategic priorities and engage directly with counterparts from major powers.

This year, however, China did not send Defense Minister Dong Jun. Instead, Beijing dispatched a delegation composed largely of military academics and researchers from the People’s Liberation Army, marking a noticeable departure from its customary high-profile representation.

The absence also meant Dong did not participate in face-to-face meetings with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or defense officials from countries including Australia, Britain, France and Japan.

A centerpiece of previous Shangri-La Dialogues had been a keynote address by China’s defense minister or another senior official outlining Beijing’s views on regional security, military modernization and international affairs. That session was absent from the conference agenda for the second consecutive year.

Speaking during his keynote address, Hegseth noted the absence of his Chinese counterpart and said he hoped future opportunities would arise for direct communication between the two sides on issues where military actions and intentions can be interpreted differently.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles described China’s limited participation as a missed opportunity for candid dialogue on regional security concerns.

Despite the absence from Singapore, Dong met Hegseth earlier this month during President Donald Trump’s visit to China.

Members of the Chinese delegation downplayed the significance of the minister’s nonattendance. Retired PLA senior colonel Zhou Bo said academic delegations had participated in the forum before, though he acknowledged that this year’s representation was at a comparatively lower level.

Analysts attending the forum suggested Beijing may have sought to avoid difficult questions regarding cross-strait tensions involving Taiwan and the impact of recent military corruption investigations on China’s defense establishment.

Chong Ja Ian said the composition of the delegation raised questions about its authority to speak on behalf of the Chinese government and military leadership.

Some diplomats also suggested Beijing may have wished to avoid a repeat of previous confrontations at the forum. In 2025, Hegseth sharply criticized China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific and urged regional allies to strengthen defense spending, prompting a strong response from Beijing.

This year, Hegseth adopted a more measured tone while still warning against any attempt by a single power to dominate the region. He said no country should be able to impose hegemony over regional security and prosperity, while also noting that relations between Washington and Beijing had improved compared with previous years.

China began regularly sending senior delegations to the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2007 and elevated its participation by dispatching defense ministers on multiple occasions, including from 2022 through 2024. The conference was suspended in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Veteran Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan said the primary purpose of the forum remains maintaining U.S. strategic engagement in Southeast Asia. While Chinese ministerial participation is welcome, he argued, it is not essential to the event’s broader objectives.

Oxford computer scientist and artificial intelligence researcher Michael Wooldridge says the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is being shaped less by scientific inevitability than by competitive pressures among a small group of technology companies racing to avoid falling behind rivals.

In an interview discussing his latest book, Life Lessons from Game Theory: The Art of Thinking Strategically in a Complex World, Wooldridge argued that many of the current tensions surrounding artificial intelligence can be understood through the framework of game theory, particularly scenarios in which competitors continue escalating despite recognizing collective risks.

Wooldridge, a professor at the University of Oxford and one of Britain’s most prominent public communicators on artificial intelligence, said the industry increasingly resembles a strategic trap in which companies continue investing heavily in advanced systems because they believe competitors would gain advantage if they slowed development.

“We’ve got a small number of very wealthy companies that are busy pursuing AI, while at the same time saying that they are afraid that something’s going to go horribly wrong with it,” Wooldridge said. “So why are they busy pursuing it? Because they think if we back down and we don’t pursue it, somebody else will.

”The comments come amid intensifying global competition over artificial intelligence infrastructure, computing capacity and access to data. Major technology firms including OpenAI and Google DeepMind have expanded investments in large-scale machine learning systems, while governments in the United States, Europe and China are increasingly treating AI as a strategic industry tied to economic growth and national security.

Wooldridge said many of the core technologies underpinning today’s AI systems are not recent discoveries. He noted that key neural network techniques central to modern machine learning were developed by the mid-1980s, but computing power and data limitations prevented their wider deployment at the time.

“The only obstacle standing in the way of the AI revolution in the 1980s, really, was that computers weren’t powerful enough and we didn’t have enough data,” he said.He described the emergence of GPT-3 in 2020 as a turning point driven largely by scale rather than a fundamentally new scientific breakthrough.

According to Wooldridge, many researchers initially doubted whether simply expanding computational power and training data would substantially improve performance. He said the success of that approach surprised a significant portion of the research community.

OpenAI’s development strategy demonstrated that scaling existing methods could generate major commercial results, he said, although he cautioned against interpreting those advances as evidence that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is imminent.Executives including Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis have publicly discussed the possibility of achieving human-level general intelligence within years. Wooldridge said those forecasts remain overly optimistic.

He argued that current systems still struggle with tasks requiring physical reasoning and adaptation in unfamiliar environments. While advanced chat systems can process complex linguistic queries, he said they remain unable to reliably perform many basic real-world activities that humans execute routinely.

“You can talk to ChatGPT about quantum mechanics in Latin,” Wooldridge said, “but at the same time, we don’t have AI that could come into your house, that it had never seen before, locate the kitchen and clear the dinner table.”Wooldridge said data availability may become one of the industry’s most significant constraints.

He noted that large language models already consume enormous quantities of text and digital material, creating pressure to secure new sources of information for future training cycles.“The whole of Wikipedia made up just 3% of GPT-3’s training data,” he said. “Where do you get 10 times more data from next time around?”That search for data, he argued, could reshape relationships between governments, corporations and individuals.

Wooldridge pointed to healthcare systems, wearable devices and online content creators as examples of potentially valuable data sources for future AI development.“The NHS is sitting on a huge amount of data about human beings,” he said. “That’s the most valuable kind of data imaginable.”He warned that commercial pressure to obtain increasingly detailed behavioral information could create incentives for broader surveillance and monitoring.

Wooldridge suggested future generations of online influencers may routinely agree to extensive data collection arrangements in exchange for visibility and commercial opportunity.The professor’s latest work focuses primarily on game theory, which he defines as the study of interactions between self-interested actors.

He said many geopolitical disputes, commercial rivalries and social conflicts can be interpreted through a relatively small number of strategic models.One recurring example in his analysis is the “game of chicken,” in which opposing sides continue escalating until one party backs down or both suffer severe consequences.

Wooldridge compared the framework to current tensions involving the United States and Iran, describing unpredictability as a recognized strategic tactic within game theory.“You’ve got two sides with ever-escalating threats against each other,” he said. “Somebody’s got to back down at some point.

”Wooldridge added that highly unpredictable behavior can complicate strategic decision-making because opponents struggle to assess likely responses and risks. Under such conditions, he said, game theory often encourages actors to prepare for worst-case outcomes.He also criticized what he described as a growing “zero-sum” political mindset in parts of modern public discourse.

In game theory, he said, zero-sum situations are not merely competitions where one side wins and another loses, but systems where actors are incentivized to maximize damage to opponents.“This zero-sum mentality is very damaging,” Wooldridge said.

“One of the important lessons from game theory is that, actually, the majority of interactions that we’re in are not zero-sum.”He linked that framework to populist political narratives that portray economic or social gains by one group as direct losses for another. As an alternative, Wooldridge highlighted the “Veil of Ignorance,” a philosophical model developed by political philosopher John Rawls in 1971.

The thought experiment asks individuals to design a society without knowing which position they themselves would ultimately occupy within it.Wooldridge said the model creates incentives for fairer social systems because participants must account for the possibility of ending up disadvantaged. He noted that former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had both expressed interest in Rawls’ ideas.

Despite concerns surrounding AI development, Wooldridge said he remains optimistic about technology and scientific inquiry. Growing up in rural Herefordshire, he taught himself programming after repeatedly visiting a local electronics shop that displayed a TRS-80 computer in its storefront during the early 1980s.

He later completed a doctorate in artificial intelligence and went on to publish more than 500 scientific papers and multiple books, while also presenting public lectures on the social implications of AI.

Asked whether students should avoid fields vulnerable to automation, Wooldridge rejected the idea that education should be driven solely by labor market forecasts.

“I didn’t get into computing because I thought it was going to give me a good job,” he said. “I got into it because I was just really interested in it.”

Trivedi, 75, a former railways and health minister and a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is expected to take up the assignment shortly, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

The appointment comes as India seeks to restore trust with Bangladesh after bilateral relations deteriorated in 2024, when a popular uprising forced then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to New Delhi, where she remains.

Her removal strained ties during the tenure of Bangladesh’s interim administration, which Indian officials viewed as moving closer to China, raising strategic concerns in New Delhi over Beijing’s expanding influence in South Asia.

Relations began improving after February elections brought Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to power, replacing the interim government and opening space for renewed diplomatic engagement between the two countries.

Trivedi’s appointment is seen as politically significant because India typically appoints senior career foreign service officers to such diplomatic posts. His political background and long experience in national and regional politics suggest New Delhi is seeking a more direct political channel in managing relations with Dhaka.

He joined the BJP in 2021 after leaving a regional political party in West Bengal, the Indian state bordering Bangladesh that plays a central role in cross-border trade, migration and security issues.West Bengal is also strategically important for Modi’s party as it seeks to expand its electoral footprint in ongoing state-level political contests.

Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, was part of British India before partition in 1947 and became independent in 1971 with military and political support from India, making the bilateral relationship historically sensitive and strategically significant.

Bangladesh’s foreign minister visited New Delhi earlier this month seeking increased fuel and fertiliser supplies, stronger energy cooperation and relaxed travel restrictions for Bangladeshi citizens.

However, one of the most sensitive unresolved issues remains India’s refusal so far to extradite Hasina, a point of friction in the relationship despite the broader diplomatic thaw.India has not publicly indicated any change in its position regarding Hasina, whose continued stay in New Delhi remains politically contentious in Bangladesh.

The appointment of Trivedi underscores India’s effort to preserve its influence in Dhaka at a time when Beijing continues to expand economic and strategic ties across the region through infrastructure investment, trade and defense cooperation.

Wang Yi has led a flurry of outreach, holding discussions with counterparts across the Middle East and Europe while advocating a ceasefire and reopening of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. Beijing has also opposed a United Nations proposal backed by Bahrain that could authorize force to ensure maritime transit through the strait.

Analysts say the diplomatic push reflects China’s broader ambition to project itself as a responsible global power. Sun Yun of the Stimson Center said the conflict presents an opportunity for Beijing to demonstrate leadership, while former U.S. diplomat Danny Russel described the initiative as largely symbolic, comparing it to China’s earlier proposals on Ukraine that lacked implementation.

“It’s messaging, not mediation,” Russel said, arguing that China is seeking to contrast its approach with Washington’s.The administration of Donald Trump has shown limited enthusiasm for third-party mediation, with U.S. officials indicating reluctance to elevate China’s diplomatic role in the Middle East.

One official described Washington’s stance on the China-Pakistan proposal as “agnostic,” though the position could shift ahead of a planned summit between Trump and Xi Jinping expected in mid-May.Beijing has an economic incentive to contain the conflict, particularly disruptions linked to the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for global energy flows.

While China has reduced its reliance on Iranian oil to about 13 percent of imports and maintains strategic reserves, analysts warn that prolonged instability could raise input costs and weaken global demand for Chinese exports.

China has also worked to secure safe passage for its vessels through the strait, even as tensions have driven up energy prices worldwide. At the same time, Beijing’s position aligns with Moscow’s opposition to measures that could expand the conflict, with both countries wary of endorsing force through the United Nations Security Council.

Diplomatic activity has intensified in recent days, with Wang engaging officials from countries including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, France and the United Arab Emirates. He has also sought backing from European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and regional leaders for China’s ceasefire proposal.

China’s embassy in Washington said Beijing has been working “tirelessly for peace,” while analysts note that its approach emphasizes calls for de-escalation, respect for international law and a greater role for the United Nations.

However, U.S. officials say the proposal lacks operational detail, describing it as a broad appeal rather than a concrete roadmap for ending the conflict. The muted response from Washington underscores broader strategic competition between the two powers, limiting the prospects for coordinated diplomacy.

Meanwhile, efforts at the United Nations continue, with Bahrain revising its proposal to authorize defensive measures to protect shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, with a vote expected in the coming days.