China’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed that Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend next weekend’s G20 summit in New Delhi, a glaring absence that highlights complex global dynamics. What’s at stake. Premier Li Qiang will be present in his place It was the first time the Chinese leader was absent from a historic meeting. With tensions growing with the West, experts believe that Beijing intends to weaken the influence of the G20 to undermine the influence of the United States, and instead tries to increase the importance of the BRICS countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization .
Usually, the Chinese president attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), G20 and BRICS summits, while the prime minister, who ranks second in China’s political system, attends the East Asia Summit, which will be held this year on September 6th and 7th in Indonesia.
This international forum comes two weeks after a brief talk between Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg over cross-border tensions. This year’s host country and China have long had a strained relationship. The two most populous nations in the world, an area south of Tibet and east of India are disputed. Both claim their power there and differ in their views on the demarcation in the mountainous region. The dispute led to a brief war in the 1960s, which ended victorious for China. But in the summer of 2020, soldiers from both sides erupted in clashes with stones, sticks and fists in the border region, in what was the worst such incident in decades. And more recently, the release of an official map showing China claiming disputed land and sea areas has sparked additional displeasure from various states.
With Xi’s announcement Hopes of a possible meeting with his American counterpart are also fading at the APEC meeting in San Francisco in November. The State Department’s confirmation came at a time when icy relations between the countries were showing signs of easing as repeated visits to Chinese territory have been made in recent months by senior US officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the climate envoy, john kerryand the trade minister Gina Raimondo.
On the other hand, the Russian war of aggression would have been in Ukraine a hot topic on Xi’s agenda during the upcoming summit. The People’s Republic is considered an important partner of Russia, although Beijing presented a controversial peace plan in the conflict. The Russian president plans to meet Xi soon, the Kremlin has confirmed.
However, like last year in Bali, Putin will be conspicuous by his absence from his meeting in Delhi. The Kremlin has said it is focused on the special military operation, as Moscow calls the ongoing war. He is represented by the Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrova practice established since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February.
And it is that the hardening of positions on the war so far has prevented the twenty G20 ministerial meetings during India’s presidency this year from agreeing on even a single declaration, so the decision in the Heads of state and government should pave the way, if possible.
Both China and Russia have made this clear in unison reject any attempt to put political issues on the agenda of multilateral forums, suggesting that together they could block G7 efforts in particular to raise the Ukraine issue in the G20. G20 finance and foreign ministers were unable to come up with a joint statement due to their opposition to the inclusion of paragraphs on Ukraine in the Bali declaration.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, there have been such a growing rift between Western and non-Western powers. This gesture not only symbolizes the geopolitical tug-of-war between these two camps, but also highlights how major players like Moscow and Beijing are making strategic maneuvers to challenge the dominance of Western-centric forums. For its part, Moscow issued a statement on Thursday criticizing the West for using forums such as the G7 and G20 to conduct propaganda against those two nations. So, although the decisions were made separately, India cannot rule out that some complicity between the two countries is at play.
The alliance between Russia and China has strengthened in recent years, marked by a shared vision to counteract Western influence and promote multipolarity. By coordinating their moves to avoid legitimizing Western-dominated forums like the G20, these two powers are signaling their dissatisfaction with the current global power structure. Their goal is to break with the Western narrative and create alternative avenues of dialogue and decision-making that are more inclusive and representative of their interests.
The group of the 20 largest economies consists of 19 countries and the European Union, accounting for around 85% of the world’s GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population. This year, the gathering is particularly important as many people face high inflation and economic turmoil against the backdrop of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, and as the host of this special summit India is in a bind to align itself with the Western powers and protect its own interests.
Western powers, particularly the United States and its allies, have long played a key role in shaping the forum’s agenda and decisions. In fact, the first meeting was held in Berlin in 1999 in response to the Asian financial crisis, but after the 2008 financial crisis it burst onto the global stage, evolving from a meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors into a leading platform for the world’s most powerful leaders of the world.
On the other hand, the consensual efforts to strengthen alternatives to Western-dominated platforms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS group, which also includes Brazil, India and South Africa, show the importance of Russia and China granting their own forums. The goal of these initiatives is to provide a space for emerging economies to debate important issues without being succumbed to the dominance of Western ideologies or priorities.