India, June 12 -- If the G7 once stood as the West's economic command centre, today it is a stage for the world's most consequential rivalry: The US and China. The 2025 Kananaskis summit arrives not as a celebration of unity, but as a crucible, testing both the G7's cohesion and its capacity to respond to a world reordered by Beijing's rise and Washington's anxieties.

In this context, the G7 is forced to grapple with the reality that its own cohesion is increasingly defined by how it manages the China question. The summit's agenda, though broad, is inevitably shaped by the undercurrents of this strategic contest. Every policy proposal, from digital standards to global health, is now filtered through the lens of US-China competition. The ...