China on Tuesday confirmed that its Foreign Minister Qin Gang will be participating in the Group of 20 (G20) Foreign Ministers’ meeting in India, reported Reuters.
During a press briefing, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, “The G20 should focus on prominent challenges in the global economy. China stands ready to work with all parties to ensure the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting sends a positive signal on multilateralism.” The G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting (FMM) is scheduled to take place in physical format from March 1-2, 2023 in New Delhi under India’s presidency.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address the foreign ministers of the member countries of G20 and he will talk about India’s growing influence globally.
The March 1-2 meeting of the G20 foreign ministers will be held days after a meeting of finance chiefs of the bloc in Bengaluru.
The New Delhi meeting will be attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. In all, representatives of 40 countries, including non-G20 members invited by India, and multilateral organisations will attend.
Mao also reacted to the White House setting a deadline for removing TikTok from federal devices.
“US is overstretching concept of national security, abusing state power to suppress foreign companies, we firmly oppose those wrong actions,” she added.
The White House on Monday (local time) gave federal agencies 30 days to purge the Chinese-owned app TikTok from all government-issued devices.
The directive comes after congressional legislation passed in December banned the popular video-sharing app from federal government devices and systems, amid concerns TikTok’s parent company ByteDance could allow the Chinese Communist Party access to user data, reported New York Post (NYP).
Several government agencies, including the White House, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, had preemptively banned TikTok from government devices before Congress’s December vote.
Meanwhile, ByteDance-owned TikTok has said the concerns are fueled by misinformation and has denied using the app to spy on Americans.
ByteDance denied that it would share user data with the CCP, calling the concerns “misinformation,” reported NYP.
The US move comes after Canadian government blocked the short-form video app TikTok from official electronic devices.
According to CNN, the ban is set to take effect on Tuesday. Government-issued devices will be blocked from downloading TikTok, and existing installations of the app will be removed, according to a statement by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.