NEW DELHI (AFP) – G20 leaders arrived New Delhi Friday, hoping to make progress on trade, climate and a host of other global problems despite the Chinese and Russian presidents skipping the summit.
The G20 was conceived in the throes of the 2008 financial crisis as a way of managing the global economy.
But as presidential and prime ministerial jets began landing in the Indian capital, the pointed absence of China’s Xi Jinping raised questions about what, if anything, the disparate bloc can still agree on.
As the summit was set to begin, officials had yet to achieve the normally routine task of smoothing over disagreements and finalizing a joint communique for leaders to sign off on.
No official reason has been given for Xi’s no-show, but China has been open about its desire to upend traditionally U.S.-led groupings such as the G20 and replace them with something more amenable to Beijing’s interests.
Xi will instead host the leaders of Venezuela and Zambia in Beijing.
Diplomatic opprobrium and war issues in Ukraine are also keeping Russian leader Vladimir Putin away.
Heading to the summit, U.S. President Joe Biden also insisted that the meeting would still “deliver”, even as markets fretted that a trade war between the world’s two largest economies was poised to escalate.
Many G20 leaders fear their economies are already at risk of being collateral damage as the big beasts of world trade lock horns.
Economists say U.S. restrictions on the transfer of sensitive technologies to China have deepened a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.
Speaking in Delhi on Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned a Chinese slowdown carried risks for the entire globe.
The summit’s host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – sensing an opportunity to burnish his credentials as a statesman ahead of a re-election tilt early next year – has thrust himself into the political void.
A G20 energy ministers’ meeting in July also failed to agree on a roadmap to phase down the use of fossil fuels – or even mention coal, the dirty fuel that remains a key energy source for economies like India and China.