On 15-16 November, after almost a year in the making, the G20 Leaders’ Summit, under the Indonesian presidency, was held in Bali under the theme “Recover Together, Recover Stronger”. The G20 is an annual meeting of the leaders of the world’s largest and fastest growing economies, whose members account for 85% of the world’s GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population. Each December, the G20 selects a new rotating presidency, which is responsible for organizing a series of ministerial meetings with the next summit. There is a high level of interest in this summit. This is not only because the leaders of the major economies of developed and developing countries can rely on the summit for bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, but also because 2022 is a “special year”. Three years ago, in 2019, the G20 Summit was held in Osaka, Japan. The late Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister of Japan, hosted the meeting and welcomed the leaders of the world’s leading nations. That year’s summit did not attract an inordinate amount of attention. After all, in 2019, the world economic was still generally under an upward trend and the world situation was stabilizing, even the acute nuclear issue of North Korea had been eased in stages. The main focus of that year’s G20 summit was the trade friction between the US and China, and member states also exchanged views on traditional topics such as environmental protection and help for the least developed countries. Three years later, however, the new epidemic has led many countries to adjust their policies on epidemic prevention; the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy and South Korea have changed their leaders; the full-blown Russia-Ukraine conflict at the beginning of the year has plunged the West and Russia into the most tense confrontation since the Cold War; the global economy is in difficulty, with inflation, interest rate hikes and the possibility of a prolonged recession becoming a thorny issue for governments around the world. The development issues and challenges are far greater than before.

The focus of this year’s G20 summit was on dealing with inflation and the huge impact on the world economy brought about by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, etc. The US-Russia-Europe triangle game was the most important element affecting the economic situation and the G20 this year. With the exception of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ultimately decided not to travel to Bali to participate in the summit, this G20 is the largest summit of participating country leaders since 2019. Leaders are hoping to use this opportunity to exchange views on key international issues with other leaders or to seek cooperation from other countries to help address the current crisis facing their own countries.

Following the outbreak of the full-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the energy, food and inflation crises have quickly spilled over to other countries, and the Indonesian presidency of the G20 is also under pressure from the economic crisis. Considering the social pressure at home and the task of maintaining a smooth G20 presidency, Indonesian President Joko visited the Ukrainian capital Kiev and the Russian capital Moscow back-to-back at the end of June this year, meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenski and Vladimir Putin respectively, making him the first Asian leader to visit Kiev since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Up until the official summit, Joko was also engaged in a diplomatic effort to get the leaders of all member states to participate in the summit. Last week, after a phone call with Putin, Joko said that Putin had still indicated that he might attend the upcoming G20 summit, but that Putin might end up being “involved on the line” and “unlikely to attend the summit”.

In fact, the G20 summit itself was set up in response to a worldwide crisis. 1999, the Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers’ meeting initiated the establishment of the Group of Twenty (G20), which was then mainly a meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors. 2008, the financial tsunami triggered by the US sub-prime crisis swept the world, and it was only at the initiative of the US that the G20 was elevated to a leaders’ summit and held its first leaders’ summit in Washington in November of that year. The first leaders’ summit was held in Washington in November that year to coordinate the response to the crisis.

While international political and security issues were certainly not off the table for the world leaders, economic issues were also the focus of this meeting. The role of multilateralism in the face of the crisis was one of the key points of the summit. In the face of current trends, countries are concerned about how the G20 can push major economies to demonstrate more of the spirit of multilateralism and cooperation: first, how to push major economies such as the US and Europe to adopt responsible monetary and fiscal policies, strengthen policy coordination, enhance policy predictability and effectively manage the spillover effects of their policies. Second, how to prevent countries from expanding protectionism in the name of strengthening the resilience of global supply chains, reduce the exclusivity of countries’ ‘circle’ trade policies, and revitalize the WTO multilateral trading system. Thirdly, how to promote international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank to help developing countries better cope with the crisis and promote fairness and responsibility in the implementation of the G20 common framework on debt disposal for lagging countries.

In addition to this, Indonesia, as the host, also provided priority topics for the conference. Global health infrastructure, digital transformation and sustainable energy transition are the three priority issues. In the area of global health infrastructure, the conference will address the response to the new epidemic and the transformation of the global health infrastructure to contribute to making global health systems more resilient, inclusive, equitable and resilient to crises. In the area of digital transformation, the conference will address key issues in the digital and economic spheres, focusing on creating a more inclusive digital transformation environment for the world. In the area of sustainable energy transition, the conference will address issues such as ensuring energy accessibility, enhancing smart and clean energy technologies, and promoting energy financing. Indonesia’s thinking is in fact the same as most developing countries in that issues such as infrastructure development and digital transformation must be revived in the face of the post-epidemic era. the G20, as a global developing-developed country cooperation organization, can actually provide a good mechanism for communication and resolute issues for a wide range of developing countries.

The year 2022 is a very special year in the world’s development process, and the summit of world leaders in this year will have a profound impact on the future direction of the world. Focusing on the key issues facing global development, the participants had in-depth exchanges on this issue and put forward their views and suggestions, which are of positive significance in promoting world economic growth. The Summit has now come to an end. The impact of this summit will be presented later in the form of economic and foreign policies of various countries. Whether or not, the summit has played a practical role in solving international security issues and economic downside problems will soon be revealed by time.

By JIN Kaiwei