Minutes before US President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week in South Korea, he said in a post on his website, Truth Social, that “THE G2 WILL BE CONVENING SHORTLY!”.
While foreign policy analysts have come to expect the unexpected from Trump, this was unusual even within that context. It was, after all, a US President acknowledging China’s great power status, treating it as somewhat equal to the US in the global power hierarchy.
Not a new term
“G-2” was first coined in 2005 by economist and author C. Fred Bergsten, then Director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in his book The United States and the World Economy. He wrote that amid changing power equations, the US needed to focus on cultivating some key bilateral relationships, calling them the “G-2”. These included the “European Union (for macroeconomic, monetary, and some other issues), China (inter alia for global growth, exchange rates, and energy), Japan (for trade and to counter China’s rise), and Saudi Arabia (for energy).”
It became part of policy debates in the wake of the international financial crisis of 2008. Bergsten later defended the concept, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine that it was never meant to replace any other relationships, or groups like the G-20 (which includes India) or institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation.
“Its chief purpose is to supplement the existing institutions and make them work better by promoting prior agreement between the two countries whose cooperation has become a sine qua non for making progress on virtually any international economic issue,” he wrote.
Bergsten argued that “There will be no sustained recovery from the current global economic crisis unless the United States and China lead it.” Similarly, as the largest polluters globally, “There will be no international compact on global warming unless they embrace it”.
Top foreign policy and security experts, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski (former US President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor) and Niall Ferguson (of the Hoover Institution think tank), joined the chorus. Bergsten noted that at the time, the Barack Obama-led administration and China under Hu Jintao “also seem to be moving in this direction”.
However, nearly two decades later, geopolitical realities have changed dramatically. China is no longer reticent, unlike when “Hide your strength and bide your time” was the motto of a nation beginning the journey towards modernisation.
Changing China
Since 2013, when Xi came to power, China has increasingly asserted itself in various domains, including military muscle-flexing in the Indo-Pacific.
The US, under Trump 1.0 from 2017 to 2021, played a pivotal role in pushing back against China. In fact, it was the Trump administration which framed China as a strategic threat and rival for the first time in 2017, defining China’s belligerent actions as a threat to the US and the West-led rules-based global order.
That led to the revival of the Quad grouping — comprising India, Japan, Australia and the US — in November 2017, on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia leaders’ summit in the Philippines. Having experienced Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific firsthand, ASEAN nations were relieved at the US’s presence and renewed focus in the region.
G-2 today
The new framing, indicating parity between the countries, has worried US partners about how Washington would now treat them after years of committing to cooperating against Chinese actions, with a potential softening on China. The tariff saga under Trump 2.0 had already cast a shadow on the earlier certainties and assumptions about US policy.
For New Delhi, the strained ties after the US’s 50% tariffs on India led to Trump’s planned November visit for the Quad leaders’ summit being postponed to next year. There is some conversation in diplomatic circles of a new Quad-like grouping, where the Philippines might replace India, especially after a meeting of the four countries’ leaders last week. A more optimistic view is that India is a far bigger economy and a leading regional power, which necessitates its inclusion.
There is also a sense of disquiet in Tokyo and Canberra about how far Trump will go with the G-2 engagement. Whether the Trump-Xi bonhomie sours, like in the case of Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, is the key question now. For New Delhi and many others, that might be the best-case scenario.
US President Donald Trump, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shake hands after their U.S.-China summit meeting at Gimhae International Airport Jinping in Busan, South Korea, Oct. 30. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) 
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