Summer of Summits: The Rising Powers at G7 and SCO

Policy Alert #167 | June 14, 2018

It’s not even halfway through the month of June and the Rising Powers have already had a busy month of summits with their counterparts. The Group of Seven (G7) met in Quebec, Canada, June 8-9, 2018, while the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) convened in Qingdao, China, June 9-10, 2018. The G7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. SCO’s membership comprises China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as ten other observer and partner states in Eurasia. As many analysts note, the two blocs exhibit a striking contrast between the predominantly Western, industrialized powerhouses in international politics and a growing coalition of rising states whose interests have not been served by the status quo. In this first part of RPI’s coverage of the Rising Powers’ summer summits, we examine domestic responses to the successes, failures, and unprecedented personal dramas of the G7 and SCO.

 

CHINA

As host to this year’s SCO, Chinese President Xi Jinping served as chair during the summit. Whether intentional or not, Xi’s speech benefited greatly from the behavior of US President Donald Trump at the G7 and his commitment to maintaining tariffs against US allies: “While hegemony and power politics still persist in this world, the growing call for a more just and equitable international order must be heeded. Democracy in international relations has become an unstoppable trend of the times. While various traditional and non-traditional security threats keep emerging, the force for peace will prevail, for security and stability are what people long for. While unilateralism, trade protectionism and backlash against globalization are taking new forms, in this global village of ours where countries’ interests and future are so interconnected, the pursuit of cooperation for mutual benefit represents a surging trend. While we keep hearing such rhetoric as the clash of civilizations or the superiority of one civilization over another, it is the diversity of civilizations that sustains human progress. Indeed, mutual learning between different cultures is a shared aspiration of all peoples.” President Xi also announced that his country will set up an RMB 30 billion (USD 4.6 billion) lending facility within the SCO Inter-Bank Consortium to assist member states’ development.

• The state-run People’s Daily directly weighed the outcomes of the G7 and SCO summits in its editorial: “Why did the G7 summit end in disarray […] while the SCO summit was full of enthusiasm and ambition? The key lies in that the Shanghai Spirit, featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development, echoes the theme of the era, in which unilateralism can hardly prevail.” The People’s Daily further attributed growing interest in the SCO as the result of “[b]igotry of a few Western countries” that has led “emerging countries in Eurasia to explore a new, adaptable type of international cooperation.” Another People’s Daily editorial, published in English by the China Daily, further hailed the summit as a testament to multilateral cooperation: “The SCO Summit in Qingdao is testimony that humankind really can rally positive energy to promote world peace, stability, development and prosperity if all countries respect each other, pursue equality, justice and win-win cooperation, and discard obsolete zero-sum mindsets.”
• In a personal editorial, People’s Daily writer Zhong Sheng reported that there exists “a consensus that the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative is propelling regional integration and boosting the cooperation among the SCO member states,” while omitting the fact that India made a point to withhold its support for the BRI in the communique.
• An editorial covering the G7 summit by state-directed China Daily characterized the outcome of the summit as a loss for not only the member states, but the entire international community: “[T]he acrimonious meeting in Quebec is bad news for the group, which is trying to resurrect its waning clout in the world economy, but also for those hoping it would deliver a positive message on global trade.” The Daily called on the international community to “rally and reject the self-oriented closed-door policies of the US.”
• China Daily writer Liu Wanli explained the stunning contrast between the outcomes of the G7 and SCO as attributable to the latter’s “Shanghai Spirit”: “It is mainly because of the continuous upgrading of the SCO’s guidelines that the organization has enjoyed impressive growth and become a model for building the China-championed new type of international relations, which features mutual respect, fairness and justice, and win-win cooperation.” The Daily’s expansive coverage of the SCO also included a collection of op-eds from SCO member states’ ambassadors to China as well as analysis from several Chinese scholars.
• The independent South China Morning Post also compared the G7 and SCO summits. The Post characterized President Trump’s tweets following his early exit from the G7 as having “shattered the facade of consensus in a joint communique following a quarrelsome G7 of rich nations in Quebec,” against the SCO’s “perfect example of the way to do multilateralism and how not to.” The editorial made special note of the attendance and participation by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite tensions over the disputed territory in Doklam last year, and observers from Iran, which was slighted by the US’s reinstatement of economic sanctions last month.

INDIA

In his speech at the SCO, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeatedly emphasized the imperative for respect of member states’ sovereignty, most notably in his “SECURE” acronym, no doubt in reference to India’s objection to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that runs through parts of disputed Kashmir territory. India was the only member of SCO to withhold endorsement of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the joint communique.

• The pro-government Daily Pioneer offered its strong support for Prime Minister Modi’s “red line” on the BRI: “In nuancing its opposition to [BRI], New Dehli has done well to decouple the need for greater cooperation within and economic integration of the region and the countries that will be served by [BRI] from the issue of each nation’s sovereign rights, which has a major implication in the projection of power in the region. After all, if sovereignty is chipped away in the name of future prosperity of the existing regional hegemon is only the gainer in geopolitical terms.” In its take on the outcomes of the G7 summit, the Daily Pioneer juxtaposed President Trump’s “dichotomies” of “blowing the global trade order from Air Force One” en route to meet with North Korean leader Chairman Kim Jong Un following his early exit from the G7 summit. “Make no mistakes, Donald Trump is more shrewd than most of the world gives him credit for […T]he way he plays chess is not classical, it is brute force chess. But that is the same way computers play chess and nowadays, computers always win at that game. […] Trump may be onto something,” the Pioneer suggested.
• The center-right Times of India, meanwhile, focused its attention on President Trump’s swipe at India’s tariffs on American products in his Twitter storm following the G7 summit. The Times called on the Indian government to pursue bilateral agreements with other countries, especially China, to “minimize the collateral damage created by President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies.” Regarding the SCO summit, however, the Times lauded Prime Minister Modi’s singular refusal to endorse China’s Belt and Road Initiative: “[T]his shouldn’t be read as India getting isolated. India needs to stand up for its own interest, which nobody else is going to articulate on its behalf. […] If Beijing is really keen on securing India’s support for BRI, it must also see a few things from New Delhi’s perspective.”
• Harsh V. Pant, Distinguished Fellow and Head of the Strategic Studies Programme at Observer Research Foundation, argued that while the SCO remains largely symbolic and its impact has been limited so far, it fits in with a larger trend for states to be looking for alternatives to Western-dominated leadership: “At a time when America is looking inward, and Europe is struggling to come to terms with multiple domestic crises, major powers are looking at multiple coalitions to manage an international order in a high degree of fluidity. New Delhi is no exception. India’s substantive engagement with wider Central Asia will be key to its growing aspirations in a rapidly evolving Eurasian landscape.”
• Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy, deputy director at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Dehli, explained in her op-ed for First Post the consensus between China, India, and Russia–which are also members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)–not to impose sanctions on Iran and the need for a multipolar order in the international system. While SCO was a Chinese-led project, Krishnamurthy suggested that it might serve as a useful platform for its neighbors to “check” its influence in the region: “Overall, a regional consensus seems to be emerging in favour of an inclusive, broad-based collective that represents regional interests. The SCO has certainly become much broader than it was when it began, and regional countries may now be evaluating the SCO’s potential of being a prospective alternative framework/platform for engagement on matters relevant to the regional order. Nonetheless, irrespective of the regional countries’ increased engagement (existing or sought) with China, the nature and the extent to which they are comfortable with accommodating an ‘enthusiastic’ China remains to be seen.”
• In the Business Standard, Sana Hashmi, from the East Asian Centre, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, argued that “the SCO is coming of age and is proving itself to be pan-regional forum which has showed increasing resilience and also finding a modus vivendi for members of the group” due to its sheer size in terms of the world population and global GDP, the salience of China’s BRI, and Russia’s wariness of Chinese dominance over the group and its own Eurasian Economic Union group. The role of the newest members, then, is to balance out the organization: “India’s entry into the SCO as a member, alongside Pakistan, would bring in new elements of regional dynamics. While it is an open secret that India’s entry will act as a natural balancer to regional equilibrium, it is also true that such an act throws open significant strategic challenges before India. Entry of the other new member, Pakistan, also exposes SCO to hidden challenges. Terrorism, trans-regional energy supplies, and infrastructure connectivity projects are to name a few.”

RUSSIA

Russia is the only state that has participated in both the G7 and SCO. It was welcomed into the expanded Group of Eight (G8) in 1997, but was shunned from the organization with the sudden cancellation of the planned 2014 summit in Sochi following its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Although President Trump called for Russia to rejoin the group, Russian officials sounded uninterested. Russian President Vladimir Putin, at an SCO press conference, expressed his support for groups like the SCO instead: “If we take per capita numbers, the G7 countries are richer but the economy in the SCO is larger. [..T]he population numbers are also much bigger–half the world’s population.” In an interview on Russia’s Channel One, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov offered a nearly identical statement: “[Russia has] never begged to come back. […W]e are working perfectly in other formats, such as the SCO, BRICS, and especially the G20, where our partners share our approaches.” Spokesman Dmitry Peskov further suggested that the relevance of the G-7 is fading: “Over the years, this forum has been losing its importance because given the changing political and economic situation, other platforms, such as the G20, where Russia is an active member, have been becoming more important.”

• In an editorial, the nationalist Pravda Report argued that “[t]he Group of Seven is a product of the past. This is a legacy of a certain period, when the West tried to integrate Russia into its structure and make the country accept Western (European) rules. […] Russia does not need to go there again.”
• Government-funded RT echoed comparisons between the “robust show of unity” on display at SCO with “the calamitous G7 meeting” in its editorial by explaining what makes the SCO different from other multilateral groups. In the piece, RT cited President Putin’s comments about the size of the SCO membership in terms of population and economic weight, as well as the group’s consensus in how best to solve issues of terrorism, instability in Syria and Afghanistan, and its commitment to cooperation in trade, especially in the wake of President Trump’s ‘America First’ protectionist tariffs.
• Sputnik News correspondent Denis Boltsky asserted in his coverage of both summits that the “Western TV and newspapers seemed to have been totally consumed with ‘the clash of the Titans’ at the G7” while “[t]he SCO summit barely made it into the western MSM’s [mainstream media] headlines, even though the Shanghai pact’s influence is growing annually.” Boltsky also claimed that in Qingdao there were “no wailing sirens, no tear gas or masked radicals in the streets, as often happens during G20 or NATO summits. Instead, dozens of locals gathered to film the motocades of the Russian, Chinese, and Belarusian presidents or take pictures of the freshly planted flower beds.”  

JAPAN

Following the G7 summit, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe noted the “intense debate” during the meeting, but argued that, “For the G7 to have exchanges of measures that restrict trade will not be in the interests of any country.”

• The left-leaning Asahi Shimbun criticized the Abe administration for relying on “a foreign policy agenda fully dependent on the Trump White House.” “The Abe administration now needs to take a hard look at the effectiveness and limitations of its diplomatic approach and hammer out a new strategy firmly tethered to the new reality. […] Abe should confront and act on the obvious fact that Japan cannot protect its own interests by simply following the United States,” the Asahi asserted. In another editorial, the Asahi lamented the irony that the SCO, whose membership includes states that favor “autocratic policies and disrespect for international law,” “came across as a more positive force for the world in contrast to the G-7, which once acted as a bulwark against improper conduct by some countries. The Canada summit showed it to be in its worst moral shape in history.”
• The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun lamented the G7’s “failure” and “functional disorder” at the summit in Quebec, but expressed its support for the group’s unanimous statement regarding North Korea. Regarding President Trump’s suggestion that Russia be invited back to the group, the Yomiuri strongly disagreed: “If Russia rejoins the G-7 group just at a time when the relationship among G-7 countries remains fragile, it could only deepen the antagonism between them.”
• The Japan Times instead focused on the G7 members efforts to make progress despite the US and supported Abe’s efforts to pursue the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership and brokering a bilateral trade agreement with the European Union: “To their credit, other G7 leaders are trying to step up and fill the vacuum created by the US retreat. […] Japan is right to demand adherence to global rules and Abe is to be applauded for his determination to strengthen them.”