Opinion China’s favourite country club

However,one country — China — appears to have made some good use of the G-20 summit. Its new president,Xi Jinping,carefully stayed away from the Syria controversy (even though China is ideologically sympathetic to the Bashar al-Assad regime and philosophically against the concept of humanitarian interventions). Instead,he took care of some practical business. He held the usual meetings with other world leaders,most of whom he had never met before,on the sidelines of the summit. Perhaps to counter the media image of a nationalist hardliner,Xi made two conciliatory gestures. One was a brief and informal chat with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,who the Chinese official media have vilified as a reincarnation of Japanese militarism. Before the G-20 summit,many analysts were concerned that Xi would snub — and humiliate — Prime Minister Abe by ignoring him in St Petersburg. The other well-received gesture was an announcement to invite British Prime Minister David Cameron to China. The UK has been put in the diplomatic equivalent of a dog house since Cameron met with the Tibetan spiritual leader,the Dalai Lama,in May last year. Xi’s personal invitation to Cameron indicates that China has made its point and is ready to move on.

Although hardly covered by the Western media,the biggest accomplishment for China at the summit was the establishment of a $100 billion reserve fund by the BRICS (Brazil,Russia,India,China and South Africa). China will contribute $41 billion,Brazil,India and Russia will each contribute $18 billion,and South Africa will contribute $5 billion. However,the leaders of the BRICS gave few details about the nature of the reserve fund or its relationship with the proposed BRICS Development Bank. Judging by its title,its founders may want to turn it into a mini-IMF run by the BRICS (which have tiny voting power at the IMF).

This development brings us to the question of how China sees its role in G-20. As a champion of national sovereignty and independent foreign policy,China is constitutionally averse to joining clubs if membership carries real obligations. Of course,Beijing makes compromises carefully. In the case of the UN,the decision to join was easy because membership confers international legitimacy and China’s veto power in the Security Council protects,rather than undermines,its sovereignty. However,global leadership clubs are an entirely different matter. In most instances,they are dominated by rich democratic countries that are both China’s most important trading partners and geopolitical rivals. Except for their prestige,clubs such as G-7 or G-8 are not worth getting into (of course,like prestigious country clubs,an upstart like China will have to be invited to apply in the first place).

In Beijing’s eyes,G-20 is a different animal. Obviously,its membership is more diverse. Rich countries,developing nations,democratic states and autocracies are all in the mix. China would not have to fear isolation on economic or political issues. An even more attractive feature of the annual G-20 summit is that it increasingly resembles,in function,the Davos gatherings run by the World Economic Forum. The official agenda typically lacks substance. Participants agree on practically nothing. The lofty pronouncements are not taken seriously. However,just as in Davos,where chief executives go to meet other business titans to do deals,the G-20 summits provide an efficient way to hold informal meetings among top leaders and strike business and diplomatic deals (the BRICS reserve fund is one example).

For Chinese leaders,G-20 summits produce another political benefit. Xi’s most important job title is the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party,not the chairman of the People’s Republic (a title routinely mistranslated as president in the Western media). He appears at these summits in his dual role as the leader of the ruling party and the head of the state. For a one-party regime ever in search of political legitimacy,images of its leader hobnobbing with other world leaders are priceless. When beamed back to China,they show,in a subtle way,that a China ruled by the CCP has been embraced by the world’s most powerful and respected countries as an equal. Such international recognition can provide a source of political legitimacy to the CCP’s rule.

As Chairman Xi headed home from St Petersburg,he must have been feeling upbeat about the outcomes of the summit. With the deep split over Syria among the 20 nations (plus Spain) represented at the summit,the Americans suffered a clear setback. The host,President Vladimir Putin,did the heavy lifting in antagonising President Barack Obama,allowing Xi to keep a low profile. As he tallies China’s diplomatic and economic gains at the summit,Xi can be forgiven for contemplating an idea that would be radical for most Chinese leaders: If G-20 did not exist,China would have to invent it.

The writer is a professor of government and non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US