International Media Centre, Hiroshima Summit - Gregory Stiles and Hugo Dobson report on the summit's evolving relationship with civil society.

Kanson minpi, which literally translates as ‘respect officials and despise the people’, is the pre-war term that has traditionally captured the relationship between the Japanese state and its people. The associated stereotype is one of docility and a shō ga nai (it can’t be helped) attitude on the part of the Japanese. Yet this is, clearly, reductive in that it ignores a long history of popular protest, as well as being blindly essentialist in that similar attitudes can be seen in other countries (take for example, the rise of what Adam Curtis has termed ‘Oh Dearism’ in post-Cold War Western news reporting). In fact, over the last quarter of a century, Japan has witnessed a substantial growth in its civil society triggered by the 1998 NPO Law, which enabled civil society organizations (CSOs) to acquire nonprofit corporation status.

At the same time, the relationship between the G7 and civil society has steadily evolved. Writing in 2000, Peter Hajnalcatergorized this evolution into three stages starting with mutual ignorance and non-recognition in the 1970s and 1980s. Thereafter, this morphed into mutual recognition and finally resulted in a two-way approach that targeted specific issues.

Kamila Szczepanska of the University of Turku has traced this history across three G7/8 summits: Kyūshū-Okinawa in 2000, Hokkaidō-Toyakō in 2008 and Ise Shima in 2016. Within this history, the Japanese government has played an important, although inconsistent, role in shaping this relationship.

For example, at the 2000 Kyūshū-Okinawa summit, the Japanese government was a pioneer by constructing the first-ever NGO centre in order to provide a venue for advocacy groups to engage with the G8. As was noted at the time, the building of this centre had important symbolic value regarding the need for NGO inclusion. However, reality failed to meet this ideal. The centre was significantly under-used because it was located a considerable distance away from the International Media Centre (IMC), while the NGOs had to pay to use the centre and undergo security procedures that many deemed overly invasive and a form of surveillance. In essence, this was a failure to understand the nature and the role of civil society engagement with the G7.

At the 2008 Hokkaidō-Toyakō summit, Japanese civil society representatives mobilized on a grand scale and were organized through the 2008 Japan G8 Summit NGO Forum ahead of the summit around specific agenda items. Their interactions with the Japanese government were open and cooperative in nature with Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo meeting with a number of NGO representatives. Dedicated space was provided for Japanese and international CSOs but they were also accredited alongside the world’s media and able to engage with them within the IMC, communicate their agendas directly and attend leaders’ press conferences.

Seven years ago, we were based in the IMC at the 2016 Ise Shima summit and able to observe engagement with civil society. This time NGOs found themselves separated from the IMC by a security checkpoint, unable to gain easy access, and were instructed that they could not display posters, signs or any promotional material outside the NGO centre. This played itself out most tellingly in the case of the Save the Children Universal Health Coverage (UHC) G7 Superheroes.These cardboard cutouts presented each G7 leader as a Manga superhero championing the UHC. They were meant to appeal to both the G7 leaders and the world’s media. However, restrictions meant that these cutouts were only displayed in the NGO centre, which was off the beaten track of the average journalist. As was the case in Okinawa, the treatment of civil society appeared to be more about the symbolic value than meaningful engagement.

Ultimately, as Szczepanska concludes, ‘the norm of civil society inclusion in global governance processes has not yet taken sufficient hold among Japanese ruling elites’, and the openness of the relationship with civil society differs summit by summit.

This year’s Hiroshima summit appears to represent a return to the Ise Shima model. Representatives from several of the large and small, well-known and less well-known, domestic and  international NGOs have been provided with a centre in which they are holding press conferences, but this centre is in a separate building to the main IMC, again, out of sight of the majority of international journalists. Some Japanese and international NGOs do have access to the main IMC and are able to rub shoulders with the world’s media and disseminate their appeals to both the G7 leaders and the world to engage with their issues. However, the number of passes is limited.

In any case, probably the most significant development since the last G7 summit hosted
by Japan in Ise Shima is the formalisation of G7 engagement with civil society through the
emergence of the Civil 7 (C7). Following the template for engagement created by the G20, the C7 is one of the suite of official engagement G7 groups that sits alongside the Business 7, Labour 7, Think 7, Women 7, Youth 7,  and joined this year for the first time by the Pride 7 (7). The P7 is an innovation in G7 summitry that brings together international and Japanese activists and allies in order to place LGBT issues on the agenda of the Hiroshima summit. However, the flipside of this initiative is that Japan remains the only G7 country not to recognise same sex marriages or civil unions and Kishida is currently struggling to steer meaningful LGBT legislation through the Japanese Diet. Once again, the Japanese government’s engagement with civil society presents us  with something of a curate’s egg.

Please check here for other live posts from the event.

Photo by D J

Robert Wade explores how Brazil is playing up G20 hosting role as a symbol of its deserved high status in the hierarchy of nations, and as a way to gain legitimacy for Lula’s domestic priorities.

The president and government of Brazil host the next G20 summit, in Rio de Janeiro, November 18-19, 2024. It is the high point of several major global gatherings the government of Brazil will host in 2024 and 2025, including the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in 2024, the presidency of the BRICS in 2025, and presidency of the climate COP30 in 2025.

G20 overview

To put Brazil’s G20 challenges in perspective we begin with a recap of the origin and membership of the G20. It comprises 19 states, plus the European Union: plus, as of 2024, the African Union. The members were selected by the G7 states in response to massive debt crises spreading across the developing world in 1997-1999, starting in East Asia. The G7 worried that the crises might ricochet back onto them; and recognized that it was foolish to meet on their own to decide appropriate policy action. So they agreed to enlarge their group by adding another 12 states to make 19 “systemically significant” states, plus the European Union. (To be more exact, the US Treasury and the German Finance Ministry selected the members, obtained approval from the other G7, and sent out the invitations.)   

The member states include: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan (these are the G7); Australia; China, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa (these are the BRICS, though not identified as such when the G20 was formed), Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Indonesia.   Eight developed countries (of which four European), eleven developing countries. Plus the European Union. Having an apparent majority of developing countries (not counting the European Union) was an attempt to gain legitimacy by moving away from the standard model of global governance since the Second World War in which developed country preferences set the agenda (as in the aid regime, where “donors” preferences prevail over “recipient” preferences). 

The first meeting of the G20F (finance ministers and central bank governors) was held in late 1999 in Berlin. From then until 2008 the G20F met at finance minister and central bank governor level (in practice mostly at deputy’s level) in a low-key kind of way, once or twice a year.   

Then came the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2008-09. By this time pressure had been growing from some G7 states (notably Canada) to upgrade the G20 to heads of government level. But as the financial crisis hit, the UN -- especially the president of the General Assembly -- made a strong bid for the UN and General Assembly to be the appropriate venue for debating the crisis and what to do. UN involvement was the last thing President George Bush and his government wanted.  So, though initially reluctant, the Bush government agreed to upgrade the G20 to leaders’ level, and hosted the first G20L in Washington, late 2008. Soon after, the G20  began calling itself “the steering committee for the world economy”, or “the premier forum for international economic cooperation”.  The push from the General Assembly died (Wade 2024).  

Being recently created in a world order of states much more multipolar than when the “legacy” global governance institutions like the UN and the Bretton Woods organizations were created, the G20 raises one of the most pressing questions of our time: to what extent our more multipolar world can be ordered by a universal frame of agreed values and rules (“a rules-based international order”) -- covering areas like trade, finance, reserve currencies, technology standards, health, environment, human rights -- or to what extent it becomes a world of multiple orders in separately co-existing, often adversarial, relationships with each other – harking back to the disorder of the 1930s?  

The G20 expresses the hope that the diversity of interests and values can be negotiated sufficiently to make real progress on issues that pose dangers to the future of our planet.  G20 informal consensus decisions do not carry the authority of formal multilateral organizations, but the informal “gardening” that goes on at and during the build-up to the summits generates trust that helps to avoid breakdown when big power tensions rise; at least, this is the hope (Wade 2023, 2024).  

The first several summits, starting in 2008, focused on a collective agenda for handling the North Atlantic financial crisis and its aftermath. The emphasis was on G20 instrumental effectiveness in proposing solutions to financial fragility that caused the financial crisis (Vestergaard and Wade 2012a).

More recently (particularly since the Mexican presidency in 2012) the focus  shifted towards being a platform for the host’s leader, government and people to present themselves to the world as “world leaders” – an  opportunity for drama not offered by any international governance body previously.

Moreover, the fact that the hosting function rotates annually between the G20 members means that its 11 developing country members have this opportunity, not only the traditional big powers.

The G20 operates a Troika system of hosting, where the Troika consists of the past, present, and next presidencies to ensure a seamless transition from one host to the next. Until 2023, the Troika always included a Global North state, such that a Global North state almost always followed a Global South state. India’s presidency in 2023 was the first time the Troika consisted of Global South states, with Indonesia-India-Brazil. Brazil’s presidency is also in a Global South Troika, India-Brazil-South Africa. This four-year stretch has been hailed in some circles as – finally -- the “Southernization” of the G20, where leaders of developing countries collaborate to set the discussion agenda for leaders of developed countries, for a change. 

In the years since the early summits the G20 process has mushroomed in all directions. As well as the annual summits, the finance ministers and central bank governors continue to meet regularly, more recently complemented by G20 meetings of ministers of departments like Agriculture, Trade, Health, Tourism and more.  These meetings of senior politicians are supported by a dense array of “sherpa” and working groups of all kinds staffed by civil servants.

G20 non-state “engagement groups” have also proliferated, to discuss proposals to feed into the more formal G20 process. These engagement groups now include B20 (Business), Y20 (Youth), L20 (Labor), T20 (Think tanks and research institutes), C20 (Civil), W20 (Women), S20 (Science), and several more, each with an international chapter and the host country’s national chapter.  Many thousands of people are involved in these groupings, and each stream meets several times in the build-up to the summit.  So the G20 has moved far from its origins as a grouping of state representatives, though the latter continues to constitute the core. But remember that the non-state engagement groups come almost exclusively from the G20 states, omitting the governments and populations of some 170 states.  

In short, the G20 affirms the image of the new multipolar world order as a (relatively) cooperative order. But the image has become increasingly disconnected from the reality. The reality is that the multipolar order has become increasingly less cooperative over the past decade, and the governmental relationships between the US and Europe, on the one hand, and developing countries on the other, has substantially eroded (Conway 2024). The West’s “vaccine apartheid” in 2021 as Covid vaccines came on stream – buying up far more than could be used while most of the rest of the world went without – caused deep resentment. Similarly, the West’s ongoing lectures on how developing countries must move to “net zero” while the West gives little assistance with finance or technology for green growth. Tensions between the West and Russia have become acute since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and tensions with China are steadily rising.

Unsurprisingly, the G20 summits of the past several years have struggled to issue a communiqué, and the communiqués or declarations have been increasingly empty.

In this context, we discuss a few of the challenges Brazil faces as summit host for 2024.

Brazil as insider and outsider

Hosting the G20 poses tensions between Brazil’s “insider” and “outsider” identities. To the extent that it highlights its equality of status with the big powers of the G20 – presiding over the (self-identified) High Table of global economic and environmental governance – it may compromise its role as a leader of the Global South, often in adversarial relationships with the Global North. Even as it highlights its leadership role in the G20, Brazil – especially President Lula – also highlights its leadership role in the alternative exclusive club, the BRICS. Lula feels most comfortable presenting himself as champion of the Global South, making himself its most prominent public face.

However, Lula has become more ambivalent about projecting the BRICS as the spearhead of developing countries. When the issue of widening the membership of the BRICS was under discussion (to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE), Brazil was a lot more wary than China. Lula’s chief foreign policy advisor now elevates the G20, saying, “I think the G20 is the closest thing to a representative body in the international community” (Cooper 2023, 55). You wonder what notion of “representation” the advisor has in mind.  

Navigating geopolitical tensions

Like Indonesia and India before it, Brazil has to navigate difficult geopolitical tensions within the G20.  The G20 defines itself as focused on economics, finance and environmental sustainability. But unlike in the first cold war when “security” and “economy” were separate spheres (economic exchange between the West and the Soviet Union was very small), today in the second cold war, now between the US plus allies and China, the two sides are linked by dense economic interdependence, and security issues impregnate much of the economy.  “Weaponize” has become a familiar word, as in “weaponize currency, trade and technology” (Wade  2023 ).

The most obvious geopolitical tension comes from the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.  Russia is a member of the G20, and is backed cautiously by China (a leading member of the G20). Ukraine is backed by the US (another leading member of the G20) and its western allies (many in the G20). As G20 hosts in successive years of Russia’s invasion, Indonesia and India both tried to deflect attention from the issue, and substantially succeeded by careful drafting of the outcome documentation.  Careful drafting at the India summit concealed disagreements by saying that the G20’s role was not to be a “platform to resolve geopolitical and security issues”, while also affirming it was against “the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any State … [and] the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.”  It helped that both Putin and Xi were absent from India’s G20 summit. Few leaders have not attended summits in the G20’s history, and the absence of these two in 2022 is another sign of the G20’s weakening.

Another obvious tension is between China and India. Melee fighting erupted on their border in mid-2020, with some 20-35 Chinese and Indian soldiers killed. Border tensions remain. At G20 meetings both governments have been concerned to collaborate on certain issues with the US and other western allies, including France, without supporting each other. 

Navigating the international trade and industrial policy tensions

As though the geopolitical tensions were not enough, Brazil also has to navigate acute tensions in strategic sectors of international trade and industrial policy. The Biden government is targeting assistance for strategic sectors with trillions of dollars in state assistance, the second biggest industrial policy package in world history; supplemented by high tariffs and restrictions on US exports of high tech to China – and even exports of its allies to China.  

Meanwhile China is targeting assistance for strategic sectors with the first biggest industrial policy package in world history. Its industrial firms received loans from state-directed banks amounting to $670 billion in 2023, up from $83 billion in 2019, and are now automated with more robots than the rest of the world combined (Bradsher 2024).  This wave of investment has yielded a surge of highly subsidized exports of high-tech products which collide with US efforts to boost production in the same sectors.

Both sides accuse the other of not playing by the rules of international trade. Lael Brainard, head of the White House National Economic Council, said recently, “China cannot export its way to recovery. China is simply too big to play by its own rules.” China’s Commerce Ministry replied, saying, “We urge the US to respect the facts and multilateral rules, immediately stop its wrong practices and return to the rules-based multilateral trading system (Tankersley and Rappeport 2024).

Virtually all the other developed country governments in the G20 share the US fear that many factories will close in the next several years, unable to compete with China’s factories. Many developing countries fear the same. Brazil’s once-flourishing manufacturing sector has been knocked out by Chinese imports (including most of the famously glittering  costumes for Carnevale), paid for by huge growth in commodity exports to China.

Meanwhile some European political leaders claim that the US policies amount to “a declaration of war” on Europeans, to quote Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor and economics minister, because of how they attract European firms to invest in the US to obtain the subsidies and protection (Chazan et al. 2023).  

Invite Putin?

Would Putin be arrested if he comes to the Brazil summit? Brazil is a signatory to the Rome Statute that empowers the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants, and it has issued such a warrant against Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. At the India G20 summit in September 2023 Lula said Putin would be welcome at his summit. He has subsequently scaled back, saying it would be a matter for “the Brazilian Judiciary”. He pointed out that Russia, China, and India are not signatories to the Rome Statute, while the US has rescinded its accession to the ICC.  Brazil too must review its decision to accede, he said. 

Role of African Union?

Brazil faces a challenge on the representation front. India’s 2023 hosting resulted in bringing in the African Union as a permanent member (not just “permanent invitee” like Spain). Now the Brazil summit must decide on the role of the AU; for example, participation in some tracks or complete integration? Name change to G21 or no name change? 

Leveraging more finance out of the Global North

Brazil must try to mobilize lots of finance for “climate change and sustainable development”, which means persuading states of the Global North to donate resources to the Global South – a perennial issue for which the Global North has learnt to voice support while dragging its feet in a near-perpetual cycle of verbal support and slim delivery.

Linked to this is the perennial G20 issue of “reform of global institutions”, notably the IMF and World Bank. The G20 outcome documents repeatedly call for raising the quota (and vote) shares of developing countries, especially very under-represented China. But within these organizations the European states resist a dilution of their large over-representation, to US annoyance, and the US resists any significant increase in China’s voice. (In the IMF, the US gets 16.5% of the total quota and voting rights, enough to make it the only member with a veto, China 6.4%, and European states almost one third.) We can be confident that the summit will yield declarations about the need for global governance reform and much more “blended finance and innovative financial solutions”, paving the way for similar  declarations at the 2025 and 2026  summits.

Securing agreement on a global minimum tax on the world’s 3,000 billionaires

Brazil’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, together with counterparts in South Africa, Germany and Spain, are pushing the G20 to cooperate on raising taxes on hypermobile wealthy individuals, building on the earlier G20 cooperation that resulted in a 15% global minimum tax on multinational companies. G20 countries are home to four out of five of the world’s billionaires. Haddad has linked the uneven distribution of wealth to climate worsening. There is a reasonable prospect that G20 support on this issue will go beyond hot air (Schulze et al., 2024).   

What to do about the obvious representational illegitimacy of the G20?

Finally, a non-challenge which should be a challenge:  the obvious representational illegitimacy of the G20. G20 champions describe it as “an inclusive body” (Cooper 2023, 49) or “one of the most democratic multilateral forums” (Rakhra 2023, 79), pointing to such measures as the high share of world GDP and population accounted for by its members; and to rising civil society participation in the G20 engagement streams (but mostly civil society in the G20 member states).

The champions make no mention of the point that some 170 states are permanently excluded: Indonesia permanently in, Vietnam and Malaysia permanently out; South Africa permanently in, Angola, Ethiopia and Nigeria permanently out; Britain permanently in, Ireland and the Nordics permanently out; Australia permanently in, New Zealand permanently out; Argentina permanently in, Colombia permanently out. This is quite different to the Bretton Woods organizations, where every member state has a representative on the Board of Executive Directors. Several “systemically important” states represent only themselves; the others are gathered into constituencies within which the occupancy of senior roles rotates between constituency members. 

The issue that will not be discussed at Brazil’s G20 is whether a broadly similar representation system should be introduced into the G20 in the expectation that it will gain “input” or representation legitimacy which translates into more “output” or effectiveness legitimacy (Vestergaard and Wade, 2012b, Wade 2024).   

Conclusion

As of April 2024, the G20 name and its swirling rainbow logo are all over Rio, and non-state “engagement groups” are gathering – in person and remotely -- to discuss proposals to feed into the more formal G20 process. The Think20’s (T20’s) call for “policy briefs” in early 2024 attracted a thousand or so abstracts from around the world (not just from G20 countries), from which the T20 coordinating committee selected about 400 for elaboration into 10 page briefs.  As an essay on participation of non-state actors says, “Assessing the impact of non-state actors on the G20 agenda-setting and policymaking is extremely complex ” (Loureiro  2023).  

In short, as well as trying to steer the G20 towards shared solutions to shared global problems, Brazil is playing up its host role as a symbol of its deserved high status in the hierarchy of nations, and as a way to gain legitimacy for Lula’s domestic priorities,  including to reduce Brazil’s extraordinary level of income and wealth inequality, not a popular idea with Brazil’s super-rich elite, a sizable proportion of whom think he should still be in jail.

Andrew Cooper concludes his assessment of the coming summit, “The only certainty is that the choice [of how to navigate the domestic and external agendas] will be made under conditions that justify the interpretation of the G20 Summit as a high-stakes, high-drama event, with Brazil and Lula center stage” (2023, 59). 

Robert H. Wade, Professor of global political economy, Department of International Development, LSE.

This is a slightly revised version of what appeared on Department of International Development blog, LSE, 26 April.

Photo by Athena Sandrini

References

Bradsher, Keith, 2024, “China’s export dominance causes worry”, New York Times (International), April 23

Chazan, G. et al., 2023, “A global subsidy war? Keeping up with the Americans”, Financial Times, July 13

Conway, Ed, 2024, “Bond between rich world and rest is broken”, The Times, April 25

Cooper, Andrew, 2023, “Brazil hosting of the 2024 G20: promise and impediments in a high-stakes, high-drama summit”, Brazilian J. International Affairs, Oct-Dec, 45-61

Loureiro, Marcia, 2023, “G20: participation of non-state actors and prospects for the Brazilian presidency”, Brazilian J. International Affairs, Oct-Dec, 21-35

Rakhra, Kanica, 2023, “The G20 as a multilateral force”, Brazilian J. International Affairs, Oct-Dec, 77-94

Schulze, Svenja et al., 2024, “Ministers of Germany, Brazil, South Africa and Spain: why we need a global tax on billionaires”, Guardian, April 25

Tankersley, Jim and Alan Rappeport, 2024, “China threatens Biden’s industrial agenda”,  New York Times (International) April 20-21 

Vestergaard, Jakob, and Robert H. Wade, 2012a,  “The governance response to the Great Recession:  the ‘success’ of the G20”, J. Economic Issues, XLVI, n.2#

Vestergaard, Jakob and Robert H. Wade, 2012b, “Establishing a new Global Economic Council: governance reform at the G20, the IMF and the World Bank”, Global Policy v.3, n.3

Wade, Robert H. 2023, “The new Great Game: big-power politics behind the come-back of industrial strategy and managed trade”, Global Policy, October

Wade, Robert H. 2024, “The G20 should be replaced with a legitimately constituted Global Economic Council”, paper for Innovation Dialogue, part of the T20 engagement stream, Rio de Janeiro, 11 April

International Media Centre – G20 Hangzhou Summit. This year’s G20 summit pays special attention to sustainable development, bringing into question how ‘development’ is defined, and by whom? As part of a redefining of the global development agenda, China as the G20 host country has placed particular value on the role of business and its ability to foster economic and social progress. The stress on business as a catalyst for development is highlighted by the fact that the B20 was scheduled to take place immediately prior to the G20 Leaders Summit, thus signalling how China sees business and development as inherently linked.

In President Xi’s B20 opening speech, he reflected on China’s experiences of development and the rapid poverty reduction that China has seen over the past few years. This was arguably the most significant contributor to achieving MDG 1: halving extreme poverty. As a bi-product of these efforts, China has developed to become the world’s second largest economy, transitioning from an aid recipient country, to making resources available for supporting development in other countries. This has been realised through industrialisation, agricultural development, urbanisation and infrastructure development.

With issues surrounding development ever more relevant this year due to the adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the global audience is now turning its attention to China to learn from its experiences of development as well as to see what leadership role it might assume. In recognition of this, Xi has purposely situated his B20 and G20 development ideas via the Chinese context, telling personal stories of how he has seen the city of Hangzhou transform as well as giving broader insights from China’s investment and development policy. In doing so Xi referenced modernisation frequently as an explanation of the successful development experienced by China, while stressing the need for greater innovation and technological reforms. Modernisation theory will no doubt resurface during discussions of industrialisation in Africa, which was also outlined as a key focus point for this year’s G20 Summit.

Specific reference was also made to the SDGs, with Xi suggesting that an implementation plan for the 2030 Agenda will be proposed at this G20 Leaders Summit. In particular, Xi stressed the need for a more globally ‘inclusive’, ‘sustainable’, ‘equitable’ and ‘open’ approach to economic growth that could better secure ‘win-win’ outcomes for countries struggling with the continued inequalities associated with globalization. In fact, Xi used the term ‘win-win’ over ten times in his B20 opening speech, giving focus to the need for renewed multilateral strategies that can move beyond ‘crisis management’ and toward more long-term global governance. For Xi, the G20 will need to pay a greater role in creating this development agenda as well as seeing it through.

In many ways, if Xi’s words move beyond rhetoric, this would be a welcomed signal from the world’s second largest economy. First, given the controversy surrounding the attainability of the SDGs, any indication for greater development leadership will be greatly appreciated from international audiences. This is due to the fact that although the SDGs are agreed in principle, there is limited consensus on delivery and many governance concerns remain under-specified. Second, given that the G20 represents between 85 and 90% of world GDP, any increased coordination from this group would have the potential to deliver serious impact. Third, given that China alone tipped the ‘success’ scale on poverty reduction related to the MDGs, any insights for effective development from China could command greater authority, particularly with countries who have remained sceptical of G7 led ‘business’ as usual.

Yet, any enthusiasm about whether this represents a new dawn in global development should be tempered by a number of realities. For one, Xi’s calls for ‘openness’ and increased global business relations operates in a context where many countries see China as a promoter of unfair trade imbalances, protectionism, and the saturation of particular markets via over- capacity and production. Furthermore, Xi’s call for mutual ‘win-win’ development strategies will no doubt be couched within China’s existing geopolitical behaviour in the South China Sea, where there are limited signs that China is willing to pursue ‘win-win’ compromises with its neighbours. Lastly, there remain many unsettled issues about the positive role that business can play in development and there are many concerns about the negative externalities that often accompany the global business culture.

In this regard, although Xi’s B20 speech can be seen as a welcomed departure in many respects, there should also be a healthy dose of political reflectivity. This is because it is hard to distinguish between the creation of new business and the solidification of global business as usual.

G20 Team: Garrett Wallace Brown, Hugo Dobson, Rishabh Kumar, Lu Yangrong, Evelyn Mantoiu, Jessica Peppiate, Melissa Pilgrim, Eleni Ravanis, Annemie Zimmerman – Global Leadership Initiative, University of Sheffield

Photo credit: pumpkinmook via Foter.com / CC BY

Guest blogger Gregory Chin, Mayling Birney Global Scholar and Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at York University, discusses China’s approach to the G20 Bali Summit and suggests that there was an important multilateral agenda to China’s meetings.

Days before the start of the G20 Bali Summit, I was interviewed by a notable New York Times reporter about how China was approaching the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia. We discussed how the remarks by CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping at the recent Party Congress could play-out at the G20 Leaders Summit in Bali. Of particular interest were Xi’s dual statements that China is facing a more difficult period of global struggle and uncertainty, and his call for China to further step up in the world to cope with the deficit in global governance and be more active in promoting its lessons learned in international development and global security.

For the media, the key story at the G20 was not the group agenda, but rather the bilateral meeting between the Presidents of the United States and China on the sideline of the Summit. It is understandable that attention was given to the bilateral meeting, but I would suggest there were also important multilateral elements to China’s approach to the G20 Bali, and they will carry over beyond the November 2022 G20 Summit. Insufficient attention has been given to China’s multilateral agenda and how it intersects with the bilateral, and how it matters.

The G2 Returns

We now know the Biden-Xi meeting happened. Insider-commentators from the two principals, and other observers in the G20 felt the meeting was important for breaking the ice, for renewing personal contact between the leaders of the two most powerful nations in the world, particularly important for registering their key messages, in person, especially their respective redlines. For Beijing, the major redline remains the Taiwan issue and the US not stoking separatist forces on the island; for the Biden administration, insisting that China not back Russia militarily. Both sides condemned any talk about nuclear weapons in the Russia/Ukraine conflict, let alone their use. The main breakthrough was their agreement to recommence their bilateral cooperation on global climate change mitigation efforts, a positive for everyone.

Forward-looking global thinkers ask whether China and the US can find in the G20 a useful forum to develop new ways of engaging each other, in the presence of other impactful nations.

My answer is that while I would hazard to guess about the US, there is a pattern of consistency in China’s approach to the G20: China has made sure to keep a focus on its ‘G2’ relationship with the US for each and every G20 summit. Furthermore, I would argue that the G20 Summit has become more important for China’s leaders because it is now the only informal leaders meeting where the government decision-makers for a broad range of globally-impactful nations (including Russia) are still together in one room, and where, in theory, they can address the most pressing global issues. Beijing thus has strong motivations to develop ways to engage the US in front of the others, as a ‘G2’ within the broader grouping.

Multilateral Agendas

Despite all the media attention on the bilateral meetings, what should not get lost, especially for those who are serious about studying the International Relations of China, is that Beijing also brought a deeper multilateral agenda to Bali; and one that is multi-layered, multi-year, and has at least three main dimensions.

First, China looked to help the Indonesian hosts to deliver a ‘successful’ G20 Summit. This meant helping the Indonesians to ensure that the broader global agenda – the issues that matter to the entire world, developing and developed – was not completely lost to the drumbeats of war in Europe.

The Indonesian hosts had rightfully (i.e. understandably and legitimately) placed global health coordination, digital transformation, and sustainable energy transition at the core of the agenda for Bali. It was their prerogative as the G20 host presidency to decide the specifics of the summit agenda for the cycle-year.

However, in Bali, the main obstacle to the global developmental agenda was the preoccupation of the G7 and NATO nations to push for the G20 nations to jointly condemn Russia for the fighting in Ukraine. For many of the Asian, African and South American nations, the war in Europe feels remote. These regions register the European warfare mainly as damage to the world economy and to their hard-earned development food and fuel prices rise. Their main concern at the G20 was to secure sustainable development and continued growth, to address the effects of climate change and the costs of mitigation, and to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

It became the unstated goal of the Indonesian hosts to ensure that the Western nations did not completely derail the efforts of the hosts to salvage what they could of the broader global agenda.

China supported the Indonesians on the broader global agenda, and at the conclusion, the hosts could declare that a number of global principles and some global measures were agreed in Bali.  Under global health, the G20 welcomed the establishment of a new financial intermediary fund for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (the ‘Pandemic Fund’) to be housed at the World Bank. Under the digital transformation, and world economic recovery, G20 leaders agreed to a number of commitments in principle, though no new tangible financial commitments were made to support the realization of the declarations.

Second, China’s engagement of Indonesia at the G20 summit was also tied to Beijing’s interests in an Asian regional agenda, with Indonesia taking over Chairing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in 2023. President Xi, at his bilateral meeting with the Indonesian President Joko Widodo, immediately before the G20 Summit, confirmed that China would give its “full support” to Indonesia’s chairmanship of ASEAN in 2023.

China and Indonesia issued a joint statement pledging further bilateral/regional cooperation.  China (and Indonesia) agreed to implement the “consensus between China and ASEAN” to “uphold open regionalism” and advance the China-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Indonesia endorsed “China’s vision to build a peaceful, safe and secure, prosperous, beautiful, and amicable home in the region.” China, together with Indonesia, agreed to promote “mutually beneficial cooperation to implement the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific”, marking a strategic channel for China to deal with the coming wave of new US-led Indo-Pacific initiatives. Importantly for Beijing, Indonesia agreed with China to promote “mutually beneficial cooperation” to further “synergize the BRI and the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025”, and to work closely together for the “effective implementation” of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) where China and Indonesia are prominent members of the new regional economic agreement.

Third, China kept an interested eye on the future G20 hosting of three BRICS (an acronym for five leading emerging economies, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries, with India hosting the G20 Summit in 2023, Brazil in 2024, and South Africa in 2025.

The Indonesian hosts were very aware that they were handing-off the G20 host presidency to a succession of ‘BRICS’ nations.[i] At the various gatherings in the lead-up to the Leaders Summit, such as the T20 summit (think tanks summit), W20 (women’s summit) and Y20 (youth summit), the Indonesian hosts tried to coordinate the discussion of next steps, future directions, with representatives of the respective BRICS nations.

Modi’s Plans for G20 New Delhi

India does not officially assume the G20 presidency until 1 December 2022. But the Narendra Modi-led government has already set the dates for the summit, September 9 and 10, 2023, and New Delhi as the site. At the closing ceremony in Bali, Prime Minister Modi pledged that India would strive to ensure that, under India’s lead, the G20 will act as a global “prime mover” to envision new ideas and accelerate global collective action over the next year.

The Indian leader acknowledged that “India is taking charge at a time when the world is grappling with major geopolitical tensions, economic slowdown, and rising food and energy prices, and the long-term ill-effects of the [COVID-19] pandemic.” Modi said, “at such a time, the world is looking at the G20 with hope”, and he promised that India’s G20 will be “inclusive, ambitious, decisive and action-oriented.”

It would be in China’s interests to engage New Delhi about the next G20 summit and to offer its support when considering that previous summits (BRICS and bilateral) have been useful platforms for Xi and Modi to stabilize China-India relations.  If the two can work together with the other BRICS members to shape a collective agenda for the next three G20 summits, they could actually provide a degree of continuity in the G20 process and agenda, which could lead to some substantive results and give new relevancy to the G20 process.

For Beijing, however, engaging New Delhi is always challenging. In Bali, at their first public exchange since the India-China standoff in 2020, Xi and Modi shook hands and had what appeared to be a convivial, courteous and relaxed greeting at the conclusion of dinner on the first evening.

If Beijing tries to engage India about the next G20, the issue is the degree to which the Modi-led government is open to engaging China. Indications are that the Modi government will use the summit as a geopolitical opportunity to showcase India’s potential leadership role in global governance; to feature India as a future-oriented, tech-savvy, reliable economic powerhouse in the world; and to shore up Narendra Modi’s stature as a global statesman.

Any efforts by China to engage India on the upcoming G20 New Delhi summit will also bump up against the Modi government’s domestic agenda, specifically its plan to organize more than 200 G20-related events across the country, in major cities including Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai, during the year-long period as the G20 host presidency, which commences in December.

Weeks prior to the recent G20 Bali, Prime Minister Modi went ahead to announce his plan for India’s G20 presidency in 2023. Modi emphasized that the theme for the G20 New Delhi would be synchronized with the main themes of his government’s foreign policy.

In Bali, Prime Minister Modi spelled out some of the details, declaring the ‘digital transformation’ will be a core theme for the New Delhi summit, touting it as the “most remarkable change” of this era. This element builds on the Bali agenda. The Indian Prime Minister said the benefits should reach everyone, and declared that, “during its G20 Presidency next year, India will work jointly with G20 partners toward this objective.” The principle of ‘data for development’ will be an integral part of the overall theme of India’s G20 Presidency, ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, or ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future.”

Modi added, “digital solutions can also be helpful in the fight against climate change. As we all saw in the examples of remote-working and paperless green offices during the COVID-19 pandemic.” In principle, Beijing would agree with Modi’s emphasis on digital solutions, but the desire of the Indian authorities to keep China’s leading digital technology companies out of India would make it difficult for Beijing to engage on digital transformation.

Modi’s “no war” message at the G20 Bali will be easier for Beijing to embrace and to get behind. It also helps with reducing geopolitical tensions between the Asian giants.

Lula, BRICS, and Climate G20

One can imagine that the return of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva presents China with a diplomatic opportunity, and that Beijing will want to work again with President Lula da Silva to advance a shared agenda for the G20 and BRICS.

In his previous terms as President, Lula made serious efforts to cooperate with the BRICS grouping, and particularly China, sometimes even at a domestic political cost.  It would be strategically important for China to support the Brazilian agenda for 2024.

Speaking at a side presentation at the COP27 meeting, Lula promised to put climate action and protection of the Amazon at the heart of his government’s domestic and international agenda.  Brazil’s President-elect stated that when Brazil chairs the G20 summit in 2024, climate will be at the top of the agenda, the priority for the G20 2024. Lula called-out the wealthy nations of the world to deliver on their pledges at COP15 that stem from Copenhagen 2009, and he criticized world leaders for ignoring warnings about climate change and spending “trillions of dollars” on wars “that only result in destruction and death.”

Beijing will have no hesitation coming on board with Lula’s criticism of war and destruction in Europe. One can also expect that China will support Lula’s climate agenda, given the attention to environment inside China, and globally, under Xi’s leadership, and equally important, due to Lula’s deep and sustained efforts to coordinate with China as bilateral and BRICS partners.

It is still too early to speculate about the South African G20 agenda in 2025. But one can anticipate that China will also throw its support behind its strategic partners in South Africa.

[i] I thank Kathryn Hochstetler, who attended the T20 in Bali in August 2022, for this observation.

Gregory T Chin is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, York University (Canada). He co-directs the Emerging Global Governance Project with Global Policy journal. He has published widely on the political economy of China and international money and finance. From 2000 to 2006, Chin served in the Government of Canada, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Canadian Embassy in Beijing.

This first appeared on the the LSE's International Development blog. The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the LSE International Development blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: Wikicommons, White House