An installation at the Delhi Gate in New Delhi on September 7, 2023 ahead of the G-20 Summit to be held from September 9-10.
| Photo Credit: PTI

The African Union (AU) is set to join the G-20 as negotiators agreed on clearing its membership, according to sources privy to the discussions at the Sherpa meeting at a resort on the outskirts of Delhi.

This will mean the 55-member AU will join the European Union as the only two regional bodies in the G-20. While it still unclear whether the G-20 will be renamed as the “G-21” after the induction of the AU, Indian officials said the announcement would help “leave a lasting imprint” of the work the Indian Presidency has done in bringing in the Global South’s ambitions to the economic grouping.

As talks paused on Thursday afternoon, Sherpas, who are the personal representatives of each of the G-20 leaders, will move their discussions to the Delhi G-20 venue next, but negotiations will continue until there is agreement for a draft declaration, the sources said. 

No G-20 summit has ended without a joint statement, and Indian officials who hope to avoid such an outcome say they hope to fill the gaps by the time the summit ends on Sunday afternoon. Much of the effort is on resolving the “geopolitical issue” paragraph, one of two paragraphs that were agreed to in the Bali G-20 document last year, that Russia and China have opposed in the Indian draft. The most significant differences are over “Paragraph 6” of the latest draft, that seeks to quote United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but there remain others, the sources said.

For the past month, Sherpas have been burning the midnight oil, with negotiations on a draft declaration continuing until the early hours of the morning. Even on Thursday, the latest version of the draft was circulated close to 3 am. The sources said that while “much ground has been covered” in the last few days, differences remain in the language over climate financing and debt restructuring as well. In addition, the developing countries continue to push back on deadlines to phase out fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions. In particular, China’s delegation has been opposed to many of the wordings and initiatives proposed by India, with more than one diplomat present at the meeting speaking about the constant confrontations going “back and forth” between the Indian and Chinese delegates.

Analysis |India stakes its G20 legacy on Global South imprint

Membership of the AU, however, appears to be one point of agreement, and both Russian and Chinese officials on Thursday backed the move even as they appeared to claim credit for it. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters “China is the first country that explicitly expressed its support for the African Union’s membership in the G-20”. “At the China-Africa Leaders’ Dialogue last month, President Xi Jinping again stressed that China will work actively to support the AU’s full membership in the G-20. China and the AU are important partners in building a high-level China-Africa community with a shared future and safeguarding international fairness and justice. China supports the AU in playing a bigger role in global governance,” Ms. Mao said. Russia’s G-20 Sherpa was also quoted as saying by Russian media that Moscow was among the first to support the AU’s membership.

File image for representation.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

With Chinese President Xi Jinping skipping a G-20 summit for the first time, Beijing is sending “deliberate signals” to India and the West by essentially downgrading its involvement in a key international forum, according to current and former officials and people familiar with Beijing’s thinking.

Missing the summit, they said, conveys China’s displeasure both with the current state of bilateral ties with India — and New Delhi’s stand that normalcy in broader ties is not possible without a restoration of peace on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) — and with what Beijing sees as a “politicisation” of the G-20, which it believes should be limited to economic issues and not involve itself with issues such as the war in Ukraine.

‘Surprising,’ says Ashok Kantha

Beijing offered no reason on Monday for Mr. Xi’s decision to skip the summit. The decision was “surprising”, noted former Indian Ambassador to China Ashok Kantha, considering Mr. Xi attended all previous G-20 summits (he attended the 2021 Rome summit virtually) and as recently as August 24 travelled to South Africa for the BRICS summit.  Health reasons also do not appear to be a factor, with Mr. Xi in the past week meeting with the visiting President of Benin in Beijing and also addressing by video a key conference on trade in services.

“So one presumes it is a deliberate signal both in the bilateral context, where there is unhappiness about the present state of relations, and a second aspect is a lack of comfort for China with the G-20 as a platform,” Mr. Kantha said. “They are sending out signals that they see things [with India] as not good and that they are not going to go the extra mile to retrieve the situation.”

Following an informal conversation between Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi in South Africa, both sides put out differing readouts over what was said, and then subsequently exchanged sharp barbs over China’s issuing of a new “standard map” for 2023 on August 28. While the timing, five days after the meeting between the leaders, was likely coincidental given the release of the map during what appeared to be a long-planned “map awareness publicity week” campaign in China by the Ministry of Natural Resources, it was seen by New Delhi as further complicating already sensitive relations amid an unresolved border crisis.

Skipping the summit also reflects China’s unease with the G-20 as a platform, and a stark contrast to its investing in other fora such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

People familiar with Beijing’s thinking suggest Mr. Xi would have been “very likely present in Delhi” if India hosted the SCO summit in person given the importance accorded by Beijing to the China and Russia-backed grouping. India decided to host the summit virtually, although it had initially planned for a physical summit in New Delhi.

“In BRICS, Xi was more comfortable as China was more in a position to influence the agenda and outcomes,” Mr. Kantha added. “At the G-20, there is much greater pressure on China, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin being absent means China will come under pressure. The Chinese feel they are more in control at the BRICS and SCO.”

Second-ranked leader and Premier Li Qiang will attend the Delhi G-20 summit. This is a deviation from standard Chinese protocol, with a clear division of responsibility in the Chinese system when it comes to international meetings. The President as Head of State (HoS) usually attends the G-20 and APEC Summit. Mr. Xi is expected to travel to the U.S. in November for the latter. The Premier usually attends the East Asia Summit, which Mr. Li is participating in this week in Indonesia before travelling to New Delhi. Both attend the SCO where there are separate HoS and Head of Government meetings.

“That practice is maintained very clearly and they don’t ordinarily deviate from it,” Mr. Kantha noted. “So this is not a routine decision, and it is clearly well thought out.”