Xi’s absence deepens India-China chill, puts question mark on G20 consensus

Xi, who has been China’s President for a decade now, is going to miss the G20 summit for the second time. But the last time he skipped this important forum was in 2021, when Covid-19 pandemic was still at its peak, and the Chinese government’s hard “Zero COVID policy” had prevented him from going overseas. In fact, he had not travelled during the pandemic at all.

This time, therefore, his absence sends stronger political messages given that the G20 is considered the world’s “premier economic forum.” It came into being at the leaders’ level during the international financial crisis in 2008 effectively creating a space for the world’s top economies gather and brainstorm on the future.

That the topmost leader of the world’s second-largest economy is absent at the “premier economic forum” is significant. The other noteworthy absence that continues for the second year in a row is the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is waging a war in Ukraine since February 2022. His absence in the Bali summit in November 2022 will be repeated in Delhi as well.

Xi’s absence also comes at a time when India, as the host of the G20 summit and the President of the G20 process for the current year, is in a strained relationship with China.

The Indian government has repeatedly linked the border standoff in eastern Ladakh for the last three years — in which 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese troops were killed in Galwan — with the state of the relationship, and has said very clearly that it has impacted bilateral ties. External Affairs minister S Jaishankar, in fact, is on record as saying that the situation is “abnormal”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his second face-to-face conversation with Xi, had last month conveyed India’s concerns to the Chinese President. The Indian government had even said that the two leaders had directed the officials to expeditious disengagement but the Chinese did not say so in their readout of the meeting. That was the clear dissonance between New Delhi and Beijing and Xi’s absence at the G20 is being perceived as a symptom of the gulf in bilateral ties.

Xi’s absence also means that the consensus on the G20 communique is potentially at risk. Over the last nine months — since December last year when India assumed the Presidency of the G20 — every ministerial and working group level meeting has been divided over one issue: the Russia-Ukraine war. While Russia and China have objected to the formulation used in the Bali declaration, the West, led by the G7 grouping, has sought to reiterate the Bali declaration. This has divided and polarised the G20 grouping, and a consensus on the Russia-Ukraine war paragraphs have been elusive.

With Xi and Putin not attending, the trend lines indicate that the consensus can be elusive at the G20 summit as well. Although Chinese Premier Li is attending the summit, the negotiating power of the Chinese delegation may be lower than when Xi would have led the delegation. And the delegation will also have to get Xi’s approval in Beijing to come to a compromise formulation. That shrinks the space for the Chinese delegation to negotiate.

Xi’s absence may also cost him politically, since the old diplomatic saying goes: “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu”. The G20, being the gathering of the world’s most powerful economies, shapes the rules of the world, gives strategic direction to the issues and challenges in front of the world. By not being in the room, and sending a leader much junior to him in hierarchy and power, he also misses the ability to play a role in shaping the rules of the world. Indeed, this could underline that Beijing is signalling a deliberate distance from the “rules-based order.”

New Delhi, however, has downplayed the absence of Xi and officials advise against “reading too much” in it. They cite the 2021 G20 Summit in Italy where six countries attended below Head of State (HOS)/ Head of Government (HOG) level.

These things do not reflect anything about the host country, the official said, and added that from 2008, there have been 16 physical summits of the G20, and one virtual summit (Saudi Arabia, 2020). There were two summits each in 2009 and 2010. Of these these 16 physical summits, except the first three summits in 2008 and 2009, there has never been a single occasion from 2010 until now when every country has attended at HOS/HOG level, they said.

That said, there is no escaping the fact that Xi’s absence comes amid a chill between the host and the guest nations — that chill may just have dropped a few points further.