Amid US-China rivalry, rest of the world will simply try to maximise their gain

While the Chinese leader skipped the summit in New Delhi, emerging actors did business with Western partners and India raised its profile
If Xi will engage only with groups in which China has the upper hand, he will realise that geopolitical voids are always filled up by competitors

Emanuele Scimia

Published: 9:15pm, 16 Sep 2023

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The G20 leaders’ failure to condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine could have given Chinese President Xi Jinping, who did not attend the summit meeting, the sense of a good result: the sense that the Sino-Russian “no-limits friendship”, supported by friends from the Global South, dealt a blow to the United States and its allies.

It didn’t. Although the G20 meeting in India might well have signalled a significant shift of geopolitical power away from advanced economies to developing countries, it was not the dawn of a new world order dominated by the relationship between China and non-Western aligned nations, of which the recent expansion of the Brics bloc would be the embryonic embodiment.

Instead, in a game of balancing and counterbalancing, emerging actors proved ready to do business with G20 partners from the West, regardless of whether this would go down well in Beijing (let alone in Moscow).

On the margins of the summit, India and Saudi Arabia agreed with the US and the European Union on the development of an economic corridor connecting Indian territory with the Middle East (including the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Israel) and Europe via railways, shipping ports, a new undersea cable and energy infrastructure for the production and transport of green hydrogen.

The project is the most ambitious yet undertaken by the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the Group of 7 countries’ response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and its EU-led twin, the Global Gateway strategy.

The EU-US global infrastructure alliance is challenging China in its “backyard” in Africa too. At the G20 summit in India, Washington and Brussels held talks to accelerate the construction of the Trans-African Corridor that will link the mining region of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the “Copper Belt” in Zambia to Lobito port in Angola. It is worth remembering that Western economies are keen to diversify supply chains for critical minerals and reduce their dependence on China.

03:15

US, Russia praise G20 summit declaration as India meeting closes without Putin and China’s Xi

The reality is that international dynamics are becoming increasingly fluid, with third actors trying to maximise gains from the China-US power struggle. Regardless of its actual substance, which will need to be evaluated over time, the agreement signed by President Joe Biden on Sunday that upgrades the US relationship with Vietnam confirms this state of things.

The US-Vietnam entente caps a bad week for China. Leaving aside the Western alternatives to the belt and road scheme, India’s G20 presidency raised the international profile of the South Asian power, at a time of increasing rivalry between Beijing and New Delhi, notably with regard to border issues in the Himalayan region and leadership of the non-Western world.

Moreover, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was said to have told her Chinese counterpart Li Qiang that Italy would exit the Belt and Road Initiative it had signed up for in 2019. Instead, it was reported, Rome would reinvigorate a 2004 strategic partnership agreement with Beijing.

Italy is the only G7 nation to have joined the trade and infrastructure plan launched by Xi in 2013 and the Chinese leadership could view its exit as damaging to its image.

There is more. On the eve of the G20 talks, Australia and the Philippines inked a strategic partnership pact seeking to limit China’s rising influence in the Pacific. Both are treaty allies of the United States: Canberra is worried by possible Chinese dominance of the South China Sea, where much of Australian trade passes, while Manila opposes China’s claims to this body of water along with neighbours including Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese display signed documents during a bilateral meeting at the Malacanang Palace in Manila on September to bolster regional security and economic development. Photo: EPA-EFE

The pact concluded by Australia and the Philippines is one more major agreement aimed at reining in China under the auspices of the US. Last month, the US pushed trilateral cooperation with Japan and South Korea over shared security concerns posed by China.

In February, it was announced that the US military would get expanded access to Philippine bases, boosting its strategy to contain the People’s Liberation Army in the South China Sea and in the Bashi Channel in case of military operations against disputed islets and Taiwan respectively.

Last month, the US also signed an agreement with Palau that allows US ships to enforce maritime rules within the Pacific island nation’s exclusive economic zone, after the local government denounced repeated incursions by Chinese vessels into the area.

Whatever the concerns – domestic economic woes, persistent tensions with the US or growing rivalry with India – Xi should understand that skipping multilateral forums does not pay. If the Chinese leader intends to engage only with groups in which China has the upper hand, such as Brics or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, he will quickly realise that geopolitical voids are always filled up by competitors.

After all, China’s international ascent was built on American negligence of what seemed to be secondary chessboards (Africa, the Middle East, the South Pacific), where Washington is now trying to regain lost ground.

Emanuele Scimia is an independent journalist and foreign affairs analyst