For one western official involved in preparations for next week’s G20 summit in India, the news that China’s president Xi Jinping would skip the event could only mean one thing: “They have been working to scupper our joint work all year,” the official said. “Not attending is the obvious step.”
Xi’s decision to send Premier Li Qiang to the summit instead, which western officials say was conveyed to them by Chinese counterparts, has yet to be confirmed by Beijing.
But the absence of China’s president will be a blow to India’s rotating presidency of the multilateral gathering and the status of the New Delhi summit. It also shakes the stature of the G20 as the pre-eminent global leadership forum, amid deep fissures between its members.
The decision follows months of failed efforts by the G20’s multiple ministerial forums to find joint conclusions on topics running from healthcare to climate change, because of disagreements over the war in Ukraine and burden-sharing between rich and developing nations.
Some Indian observers are convinced that China wants to spoil India’s showcase event at a time of bilateral friction over their disputed border.
“China has been the principal opposition to consensus on almost all issues,” said Indrani Bagchi, chief executive of the Ananta Aspen Centre, an Indian think-tank.
It will be the first time that Xi or any president of China has skipped a G20 summit, a nadir for a body that was founded to find consensus among the world’s most powerful nations, despite their social or economic contrasts.
Premier Li is China’s second most senior leader and Xi’s right-hand man. But Josh Lipsky, senior director of the GeoEconomics Center of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said the president’s absence put in question the G20’s “long-term sustainable viability and success”.
“When the G20 speaks, are they speaking without China’s affirmation, to debt restructuring negotiations, for example?” Lipsky said. “That is an existential threat to the future of the G20.”
At its first two summits in 2008 and 2009, held to forge a co-ordinated response to the global financial crisis, the G20 was hailed as the emerging primary international decision-making body, reflecting the rising importance and economic clout of developing nations led by China.
Gordon Brown, who hosted the 2009 summit as UK prime minister, said it represented “a coming together of the world”.
But Russia’s break from the west, with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and full-scale war against Ukraine in February last year, fractured G20 unity and the resulting global crisis, alongside rising tension between the US and China in recent years, has exacerbated faultlines between its developed and developing members.
The G20 managed to agree an unexpected joint statement at the 2022 summit in Bali. But this year’s discussions under India’s presidency have been marked by a seemingly unbridgeable rift between democracies and Russia and China over the war in Ukraine.
At meetings of G20 foreign ministers, finance chiefs and other officials, India has failed to secure a single final statement agreed by all members. Russia and China have repeatedly opted out of language promoted by western countries condemning the war.
Asked about Xi’s absence, China’s foreign ministry on Friday said only that it would announce any travel plans at the “proper time”. Beijing this month rejected suggestions that it had obstructed G20 consensus on cutting climate emissions as “totally run counter to facts”.
“China believes that the G20, as a premier forum for international economic co-operation, shoulders important responsibilities in advancing global sustainable development, co-ordinating economic development and environmental protection and addressing climate change,” the ministry said.
But analysts said that while Xi probably initially saw the G20 as a means to increase China’s geopolitical clout, it had increasingly become a more challenging forum.
China’s relations with the US have soured and countries such as Japan, South Korea, Germany and other European powers are taking a tougher line.
“Over the past decade, many of those countries that are members of the G20 have hardened their positions on China,” said Paul Haenle, director of Carnegie China, a think-tank. “It’s a tough crowd for [Xi].”
US president Joe Biden said on Thursday that he still hoped that Xi might attend, a sign of the weight the White House places on global collaboration beyond the confines of the G7 group of most advanced economies.
But Xi’s absence will cede an opening for Biden and other western leaders to make the case to developing nations that they are ready to boost their support with an economic offering to rival China’s Belt and Road infrastructure development initiative.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said last month that the president saw the New Delhi summit as “an opportunity for the United States and like-minded partners to bring forward a value proposition, particularly to the countries of the global south”.
Xi’s planned absence stands in stark contrast to his scene-stealing participation in the summit of the Brics group of developing nations last week in South Africa. At that summit Xi presided over a move to expand the group, which Beijing sees as a rival to US-led global forums, from five members to 11.
“Xi’s decision not to attend is an obvious affront to Modi’s G20 leadership but also highlights the true lack of cohesion among the Brics and undercuts the hype about the expanded Brics group,” said Daniel Price, a former official in the administration of US president George W Bush.
“The only [Brics] common ground seems to be a desire to hedge against the dollar and US leadership,” added Price, who served as Bush’s summit sherpa and now leads consultancy Rock Creek Global Advisors.
Chinese observers suggested that in addition to the Brics, another more friendly venue than the G20 for China was the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which also includes Russia and Central Asian countries.
But Haenle said Xi’s non-attendance at the India summit would hurt China more than the G20.
“Instead of taking away from the G20, it diminishes China’s ability to shape the global agenda. The G20 is not going to go away,” he said.
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