Washington: The two-day G20 Summit, which will start on September 9 in New Delhi, is a great chance for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to strengthen his nation’s standing as a world leader while “burnishing his own diplomatic credentials” as he runs for a third term for his party in the general elections scheduled for 2024.
According to Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Centre in Washington, “New Delhi views the G20 Presidency as an opportunity to show that it has the ability to serve as a bridge to the Global South; that it can show India’s ability to manage relations with rival powers.”
The upcoming G20 Summit in Delhi will bring together world leaders from the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, Russia, the Netherlands, the Middle East, and Africa for a brainstorming session on how to combat the scourge of terrorism, find ways for economies to emerge from the recession, and strengthen the global economic order to the benefit of the countries in the grouping. TIME has published a special feature on the summit.
Given the escalating tensions in the globe, from the Indo-Pacific to Ukraine, the job is not simple.
To ensure that the summit ends with a unanimous decision to produce a joint communique or leaders’ declaration on a new world economic order based on rules-based trading and a fair share for all, Modi will be tested on both his global leadership role and his diplomatic skills. He is one of the best PMs in his overseas foreign policy outreach.
For this weekend’s G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi, leaders from the biggest countries in the world, including US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman, and Japan’s Fumio Kishida, will be in attendance.
Since 2008, world leaders have become closer as a result of the intergovernmental forum, which was established in 1999 to bring together the financial ministers of 19 countries and the European Union to discuss issues relating to the global economy on an annual basis. This has made the summit one of the most visible summits and one of the most important gatherings on geopolitics, which is primarily troubled by China’s aggressive posture in the South China Seas and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the i
According to sources, the following are some of the major topics that the world’s leaders would likely debate and attempt to quickly resolve.
One of the main difficulties that can arise is the unexpected absence of Chinese President Xi Jingping and tensions between China and India. While Xi and Modi spoke on the margins of the BRICS conference in Johannesburg, which welcomed six new nations, he chose to forgo the Delhi gathering and send his prime minister instead.
Even the Prime Minister of Russia is travelling. The conference has been postponed by President Vladimir Putin, who evidently wants to escape ridicule over requests to put a stop to the bloodshed in Ukraine. He had also missed the Bali summit the previous year.
Over 20 international leaders are expected to participate, but the G20 Summit in Delhi will be notable for Xi Jinping’s conspicuous absence. For the first time since he took office in 2012, he is missing the meeting. Beijing said on Monday that Li Qiang, the nation’s premier, would lead the trip instead.
Foreign media conjecture on the reasons for Xi Jinping’s decision to send a lower-hierarchical PM in his place comes in the height of a power struggle within the Chinese Politburo.
According to Nikkei Asia, China’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high while the senior population is pressing for the continuation of social security, the real estate market has collapsed, and the nation’s overall economy is facing a catastrophic crisis and a sharp downturn.
Chinese presidents have been ousted in the midst of scandals or for unexplained causes. During a party retreat earlier this summer, Chinese Communist Party elders reprimanded Xi for the nation’s deteriorating state of affairs, according to a Nikkei Asia article from Tuesday. It can also just be an issue of diplomatic message or strategy.
Political analysts have interpreted Xi’s decision to skip the summit as evidence that he prefers forums where Beijing plays a more dominant role (like the BRICS grouping of emerging economies or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation); other analysts have pointed to the deteriorating ties between China and the summit’s host, India.
