The absence of China’s President Xi Jinping from this week’s G20 summit in New Delhi was not unexpected, and it would have no impact on efforts to generate a consensus communiqué at the conference, according to Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
The Sept. 9-10 meeting of the world’s richest countries is taking place amid a “very turbulent” global climate, and expectations from the G20 to find answers to some of the world’s most urgent challenges are “very high,” he told the ANI news agency.
G20 Sherpas, or nation representatives, are negotiating to reach an agreement and issue a declaration at the summit in New Delhi, according to Jaishankar in the interview, which aired on Wednesday.
Jaishankar also downplayed a threat from his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who would represent Moscow at the summit in the absence of President Vladimir Putin, that Russia would veto the meeting’s final conclusion unless it reflected Moscow’s views on Ukraine and other problems.
Countries aim to optimise their bargaining positions, according to him, and citizens should not “prejudge” the outcome.
“I am confident that every member of the G20 who comes to Delhi will understand the weight of duty that they bear…that the other 180 countries in the world are looking to them to set the course, and that they cannot afford to fail them.”
The G20 is “very much a collaborative forum” and “not an arena for power politics,” according to Jaishankar, who owns a minority share in ANI.
“Today, the world’s expectations are very high in terms of what the G20 is capable of producing, and producing in terms of meeting the world’s challenges.”
DEEP SEPARATIONS
The G20 groupings the world’s 20 main economies, but it has been fractured owing to disagreements over the Ukraine conflict.
Analysts and officials have predicted that the absence of Putin and Xi, as well as disagreements over the war, will make it impossible to reach a consensus leader declaration at the summit.
According to Jaishankar, presidents have skipped summits in the past, and Xi’s absence was not exceptional and had nothing to do with India.
India-China relations have been frozen since a fatal military skirmish on their Himalayan border in June 2020, and observers say Xi’s absence from the summit is a new blow for the Asian powers.
However, Xi’s absence might be interpreted as a signal of his ‘East is rising, and the West is sinking’ narrative, as well as a display of sympathy with Putin, according to Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University.
Premier Li Qiang will represent China at the summit, and Jaishankar stated that a “country’s position is clearly reflected by whoever is the representative.”
The conference was also viewed as a prospective site for a meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden, who has confirmed his presence.
During the meeting, Biden will focus on overhauling the World Bank and pressing other multilateral development institutions to increase funding for climate change and infrastructure projects, according to the White House.
Fumio Kishida, Japan’s Prime Minister, has stated that he wishes to tackle digital challenges as well as food security. India has stated that negotiations on a worldwide framework to govern crypto assets are currently ongoing.
