PARIS — 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 the G-7 club of wealthy nations to forward their interests.
No surprise there. Imagining Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong brainstorming with President Ford and other leaders would have been unthinkable.
China was in turmoil, nowhere close to becoming the economic giant it is now. Mao had also helped defeat France and U.S. forces 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 Group of 7 when Canada joined the following year.
But as President Trump and his G-7 counterparts gather again in France beginning 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.
Put simply: Without China, does the G-7 make sense?
By the numbers
If determined only by economic success, China would already be in the club.
Its economy, swollen by decades of growth since Mao’s death in 1976, now dwarfs those of G-7 nations Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada — leaving only the United States to catch. By this measure, a G-7 summit without China is arguably like a soccer World Cup without five-time winner Brazil.
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 G-7.
“So many understandably ask: Would the G-7 and the global community be better off if China became a member of the G-7 club? A plausible answer is ‘Yes.’”
But it’s only for democracies
A year ago, Trump mused about possibly expanding the club to include China, saying “it’s not a bad idea” when a journalist asked him.
But an unwritten G-7 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.
Nor, under President Xi Jinping, 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 G-7 nations for civil liberties.
China a priority subject for the G-7
China’s clout affects all G-7 countries in myriad ways. It sells far more goods than it buys, announcing a record trade surplus of almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, which is a source of friction with other industrial powers. It controls supplies of crucial rare minerals. Its technological advances and growing military strength are giving rivals cold sweats. And it is the world’s biggest emitter of climate-warming pollution.
All this means that China will be an elephant in the room at the summit, which runs through Wednesday.
As host, French President Emmanuel Macron has carved out time for the leaders to talk about how to rebalance trade with China, amid fears that soaring Chinese exports of cars and other products could wreck G-7 industries.
The chemistry between Trump and other G-7 leaders has been bad of late — over the Iran war and 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.
“They agree on the same thing, you know: China is a problem,” he said.
Beijing looking on warily
China’s Communist Party-led government has in the past criticized the G-7’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 gathering in the French Alpine spa town of Evian-les-Bains, 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 G-7 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.”
But Chinese leaders cannot ignore it.
“China recognizes that the G-7 still represents a very significant concentration of economic, technological, military and financial power,” Wang said.
China seen as a threat to G-7 cohesion
Analysts say that admitting China into the club could wreck its cohesion because Beijing’s authoritarian system of government, its interests and its positions on Russia, Iran and other major issues are not aligned with the group. China’s presence also could test the other members’ 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 G-7 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.”
Russia’s example is also a barrier to China
The G-7’s last expansion — accepting Russia as a member in 1998 — didn’t end well.
The club froze out Russian President Vladimir Putin when he seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, foreshadowing the full-scale war now raging since 2022.
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.”
Leicester writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Ken Moritsugu and E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.