Days after the recent Group of 20 (G20) summit in India it is becoming embarrassingly obvious that the New Delhi gathering of the world’s richest and poorest nations has turned out to be a damp squib. Worse, the formation itself could be drifting towards irrelevance.
To be fair to the host, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his government rolled out the red carpet to the guests. He also has to be commended for the hard work in cobbling together a lengthy, but mainly meaningless, declaration that could be signed by all parties including the West, China and Russia, who are at each other’s throats on many issues.
The New Delhi summit will be remembered for having admitted the AU, a mainly toothless continental body, as a permanent member of the G20. Symbolically, this is significant for Modi’s efforts to position himself as the champion and voice of the so-called Global South of developing nations. For the AU, which is dismally failing to stop military juntas running amok in former French colonies, this will bolster its shrinking stature. Under the AU the continent has struggled to speak with one voice on major matters.
Three issues have overshadowed this past weekend’s summit. First, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains a divisive point. The weekend statement is softer than the one of 2022 with respect to the war. It makes reference to — but does not condemn — threats and use of nuclear weapons in any conflict. That grim scenario remains firmly on the table in the Kremlin.
Instead of rattling Russian President Vladimir Putin, the summit opted for softer language. Putin, with his faltering war, stayed away from the summit supposedly out of security concerns. Other than Beijing and Belarus, he has not travelled out of the continent since he invaded Ukraine.
August’s summit of Brics — Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA — in Johannesburg would have been his first major trip. Though he was known to have been keen to show up at the Johannesburg summit, he was persuaded to stay home and avoid being arrested by SA authorities on a warrant by the International Criminal Court.
Second, tensions between China and India are growing rapidly. The reasons are twofold. Beijing believes New Delhi is ideologically unreliable as a partner. For example, it is annoyed that India, which is in a partnership with China in Brics and G20, can see other partners. A case in point is India’s membership of the Quad — a group including Australia, Japan and the US. Like Aukus (Australia, the UK and the US), Quad is seen as an anti-China bloc.
And, lately, China and New Delhi have a border dispute that has undermined the Brics partnership. This tension was evident even at the Brics summit in August.
Chinese President Xi Jinping stayed away from the G20 summit. At the last minute, he sent his prime minister, Li Qiang, to attend. Also, Xi is unimpressed by Modi’s claim to be the voice of the developing world. China fancies itself as a legitimate champion of the Global South.
This is despite China’s amazing rise to superpower status. Today, its economy is the second-largest in the world. Yet at global forums such as the World Trade Organisation Beijing refuses to be classified as a developed country.
In Brics, Xi has been sponsoring two causes. He led the campaign to expand it to 11 countries, including Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. A bigger Brics could easily rival the G20.
The other cause close to Xi’s heart has been a move away from the use of the dollar in favour of Brics currencies. Without a free trade area in the bloc it is difficult to see how politics alone can turn this aspiration into reality.
For its own reasons the West is not opposed to India replacing China. It sees India as less threatening to its interests than China.
Third, there is the issue of constant China-US rivalry. Before the summit Washington imposed restrictions on microchip sales to Chinese tech companies. In retaliation China banned its officials from using iPhones.
Staying away from the summit means Xi missed an opportunity to have a sidebar chat with Joe Biden, his US counterpart, on how to de-escalate this unhelpful tit-for-tat competition. Under Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor, the China-US trade and currency wars cost global trade a fortune.
The world’s two largest economies need each other to tackle the climate change crisis and ensure the global postpandemic recovery is strengthened. With Xi’s continued proximity to Putin, the West needs him as an ally, not a rival, in ending the Ukraine war.
It is hard, and probably too soon, to tell whether Xi wants or is actively working towards collapsing the G20. Brazil now takes over its rotating presidency, and given Luiz Lula da Silva’s commitment to the developing world, his presidency may be the last chance to breathe life into the G20.
Otherwise, oblivion could be the G20’s next destination.
• Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is CEO of the Small Business Institute.
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