Author: Ren Xiao, Fudan University
A reform-minded status-quo power sits somewhere between rigid and anti-status quo powers.
A status-quo state accepts the existing rules of the game and does not seek to change them because it is generally satisfied with the current situation. China has benefited from the existing international system, and has risen to become the world’s second-largest economy. Logically, it would not aspire to overthrow this system within which it is rising to new heights. In this sense, China is a status-quo power. Nevertheless, China is not simply looking to rigidly adhere to this existing system. Read more…
Authors: Brad Glosserman, CSIS, Peter Walkenhorst and Ting Xu, Bertelsmann Foundation
The most recent sign of the global order’s age and obsolescence was the BRICS summit held in New Delhi on 29 March 2012. Even though the group of countries that make up BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will not reorder global politics, their determination to articulate the grievances of emerging states should not be ignored.
Take, for example, their call for a new development bank to complement the World Bank by placing greater emphasis on the needs and priorities of developing economies as those nations themselves see them. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, Bank Indonesia
As a member of the G20, Indonesia’s geopolitical position has been under the international spotlight. But with its huge population and only slight contributions to the G20, many still see it as the elephant in the room.
Moreover, the minimal contributions that Indonesia has made have lacked follow through. For instance, one of Indonesia’s most praised contributions and leadership examples was its efforts to phase out fossil fuel subsidies in 2008. But the battle to phase out fossil fuel subsidies this year looks increasingly likely to fail. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
Think tanks from around the world convened on 27–28 February at the Think 20 meeting in Mexico City to discuss various issues for the upcoming G20 Summit in Los Cabos.
The Mexican G20 presidency and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations jointly hosted the meeting, in which four broad topics were discussed: finance and economics, green growth, food security and commodity-price volatility, and the role that think tanks can play in making the G20 more effective. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
The world’s rapidly changing geopolitical, economic and social landscape demands that this year’s G20 Summit be different from previous years.
The last 12 months have witnessed the Japanese triple disaster, the Middle Eastern and North African ‘Arab Spring’, nuclear-powered North Korea’s leadership succession to a 27-year-old, Western condemnation of the Iranian nuclear power program, and the shift of US military strategy to the Asia Pacific. Read more…
Author: Geethanjali Nataraj, NCAER
As developed countries struggle to recover after the global recession and try to confront the looming sovereign debt crisis in Europe, big emerging markets are now driving global growth.
Given the slow down in developed countries, emerging economies are trying to boost domestic demand to sustain growth — and this is particularly the case in China. Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
The World Bank recently published a valuable research paper (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5940 by Justin Yifu Lin and Doerte Doemeland) which presents the evidence needed to justify a globally coordinated initiative in carefully selected infrastructure investment.
A G20 initiative in 2012 could make this happen. Read more…
Author: Suman Bery, IGC
The Indian government presented its National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) to the nation in early November.
Presumably, the announcement was timed to demonstrate that reform is alive and kicking before parliament reconvenes later this month. With the final text now available on the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion website, it is possible to take a considered view of the policy’s goals, the means proposed to achieve them and the probability of success. It is also possible to speculate on the unintended consequences and possible collateral damage.
Read more…
Author: Jacob Kierkegaard, PIIE
The G20 Summit in Cannes probably made its most important contribution to global financial stability and economic growth before it even commenced.
The summit, held 3–4 November, became a deadline for European leaders to deal decisively with the economic and financial crises in the euro zone. Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
The 2008 global financial crisis catalysed a long-overdue transformation in the oversight of global affairs, bringing large emerging Asian economies to the G20 table.
A transition in the role of Asian countries at the G20 — from cautious and sometimes defensive to visionary and exemplary — was expected to unfold slowly, possibly taking a decade or more. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
Last week the world was reassured by the thought that Europe had done a deal which avoided default by Greece, the threat to its southern members and to the euro zone itself.
All that unravelled as Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou surprised European leaders and world markets with his referendum plan — just as the G20 meeting got under way in Cannes. Read more…
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
On 2 November, on the sidelines of the G20 leaders meeting in Cannes, Zhang Tao, director general of the international department of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), averred that China’s foreign exchange management strategy was based on ‘the principle of safety, liquidity and adding value’.
Given the US$271 billion in reserve losses presumed to have accrued during the 2003-2010 period as a result of the US dollar’s depreciation, this notion of ‘safety’ appears to be a rather elastic one. Read more…
Author: Wook Chae, KIEP
For many reasons, the G20 may be justifiably considered the world’s premier economic forum. These reasons are often associated with problems inherent in the earlier G7 grouping.
The most prominent among those problems was that the G7 consisted only of advanced industrial countries and thus could not legitimately claim the privilege of making important decisions on global economic issues. For the G20 to maintain its authority in future it must continue to incorporate the developing world, and Asia in particular. Read more…
Author: Wang Yong, Peking University
The upcoming G20 Summit in Cannes will undoubtedly attract the world’s attention, as many look to see whether the G20 can play a positive role in the global economic recovery.
And while searching for an effective solution to the crisis, the world will also focus on China, asking whether it might become a responsible ‘leadership state’ in an emerging global governance structure like the G20. The answer, it seems, is that based on its own interests, China is choosing to become a responsible contributor to global governance and wants to become part of the solution to the current global crisis. Read more…
Authors: Peter Drysdale and Shiro Armstrong, East Asia Forum
Suddenly Asia has emerged as a major player in the global economy.
Asia already accounts for 27 per cent of world GDP and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) 2050 Report issued last May suggests that it will account for as much as 51 per cent a generation hence. Read more…
