It was India’s first time hosting the G20 summit, and a Chinese President’s first time not attending one… What happened?
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00:00For the first time, a Chinese president will not be attending the G20 summit.
00:04China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Chinese Premier, Li Cheng,
00:08will attend G20 in Delhi.
00:22China's announcement came just five days before the summit,
00:25whereas Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was also not attending,
00:29had personally telephoned Prime Minister Narendra Modi
00:32to inform him of the same on 28th August.
00:46Jinping's no-show could be seen as a slight to India,
00:49who was playing host to this particular group of leaders for the first time.
00:53Tensions had been simmering between the two neighbours over their disputed border
00:58along the Line of Actual Control, the LAC, in Ladakh for three years,
01:02after at least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops were killed in Galwan in 2020.
01:08And just a week ago, China published a new map,
01:12which included India's Arunachal Pradesh and the disputed Aksai Chin as a part of China.
01:18India lodged a strong protest against this.
01:20The G20 was cemented in 2008 during the global financial crisis.
01:24It is considered to be the premier economic forum
01:27where the world's top economies gather to discuss the future.
01:31China is currently the world's second-largest economy,
01:34and Jinping's absence from the summit is significant.
01:38Some experts suggested that China did not want to accept India's influence
01:42as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world,
01:45while China's economy was slowing down.
01:48Apart from Modi, the Chinese president would also have shared space with other world leaders,
01:53like US President Joe Biden, amid the two countries' weakening relations.
02:00Jinping would also have met Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in India
02:06in the middle of China's widespread campaign against Japan's release of Fukushima wastewater.
02:11Jinping had, however, attended the BRICS summit in South Africa in August.
02:16Some political analysts felt that he was promoting BRICS as an alternative
02:21to G20 or G7, which were largely considered to be West-led.
02:26Wen Tisong, a China expert from the Australian National University,
02:30said that this could be a visual illustration of Xi's narrative
02:35of the East is rising and the West is falling.
02:38Alfred Wu, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore,
02:43also said that Jinping was setting his own agenda,
02:46where he prioritised national security, staying in China
02:50and making global leaders visit him instead.
02:53Telenexpress reported that officials in Delhi advised against reading too much
02:57into Jinping's absence and that it didn't reflect anything about the host country.