Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stated firmly Saturday evening, Sept. 9, after the end of the first day of the G20 summit that “China was very supportive” of India’s efforts to get a unified statement adopted at the G20. That certainly made headlines in India.
Prodded by media about Chinese President Xi Jinping not personally attending the summit, (Jaishankar)[https://www.mea.gov.in/media-briefings.htm?dtl/37093/Transcript_of_Press_briefing_by_G20_Presidency_September_09_2023] responded in his final answer: “It’s for every country to decide at what level they will be represented. I don’t think one should overly read meanings into it. What I think is important is, what is the position that country has taken, and how much that country has contributed to the deliberations and the outcomes, and I would say that China was very supportive of the various outcomes.”
China and India have their differences, but the leadership of both countries are no fools.
On the day the G20 opened, China’s often-hardline Global Times ran an editorial calling out U.S. and Western efforts to “woo India” into getting into a fight with China, ruin the G20 summit, and thereby block India’s growing leadership in world affairs:
“This is the first time India will hold such a large-scale multilateral diplomatic summit. Judging from the preparations, it seems that New Delhi highly values this event, hoping that its status as a `great power’ can be enhanced by hosting the G20 summit successfully. But the U.S. and the West, which often claim they `stand with India,’ have made great efforts to hype the `differences’ between the participating countries of the G20 summit….
“[I]t is not difficult to see that the Indian side wants to focus the discussion on economic recovery and multilateral diplomacy, which has been the main theme of the G20 platform all along. New Delhi has repeatedly said that the forum is not a place for geopolitical competition. For instance, on the India-China conflict, which the U.S. and the West have been hyping up….”
First, the U.S. and West “hyped up” an imagined conflict between the BRICS and the G20 platform. “Second, they try to provoke China-India conflicts by using India’s presidency to hype the competition between the dragon and the elephant…. The U.S. and the West have shown a gloating attitude over some geopolitical divergences, including those between China and India. They want to see deeper division and even fights.”
The Global Times recommends the West cut it out and recognize that “it is … in the long-term interests of the U.S. and Western countries to let consensus transcend differences and gather strength through cooperation.”
