With the clock ticking down on his presidency, Obama will attend a G20 summit in China, a visit that will underscore the challenges he has faced with a rising world power that is both an economic partner and strategic rival.
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Obama will be in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, on September 4 and 5.
Hangzhou’s scenic West Lake is a tourist hotspot.
In 2008, China’s then president Hu Jintao told the first G20 summit in Washington that “steady and relatively fast growth of China’s economy is in itself an important contribution to worldwide financial stability and world economic growth”.
The government shut down local factories to generate cleaner air for the duration of the meeting, and restricted auto traffic. During the annual meeting, world leaders from 20 different countries as well as leaders from global organizations like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund will discuss issues centering on low growth woes threatening the world economy.in hopes of finding a common solution. Concerns are growing about increasing opposition to free trade in many industrialized nations in Europe and North America – and similarly, there are perceptions in Germany and Europe that China is adopting protectionist measures and making it increasingly hard for Western corporations to invest and do business in China.
“China has the world’s largest wind and solar industries; they are really pushing on electric vehicles, these are all sectors they see as future growth areas”, Lin said.
Still, the summit is unlikely to produce any major reform measures, as member states remain divided over the steps needed to promote economic competitiveness and job creation.
This photo, taken on November 15, 2015, shows President Park Geun-hye (R) shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin before a photo session at the Group of 20 summit in Antalya, Turkey.
“The risk is that nothing much will be achieved”, he warned.
“Because of the tremendous efforts that the United States made through universities, through national labs, through environmental NGOs, China did slowly come around and began to recognize this was a threat to China too”, Schell said. “This year has shown China can set the agenda”, he added.
Officials say most of the meetings are still being worked out.
Total GDP: $34.2 trillion (47 percent of world GDP).
As leaders of the world’s major economies are to gather in Hangzhou, all eyes are on China to see what the economic powerhouse can offer in global governance to revive the world economy.
US President Barack Obama arrives at The White House on August 26, 2016 in Washington DC. It gives him a chance to reflect upon his economic record.
“The G20 will discuss how to reverse the slowdown in the growth of trade and foreign investment.and to communicate the benefits of trade to citizens while addressing their concerns”, they wrote in a joint letter.
Obama had spoken out strongly against a Brexit, warning voters in the referendum their nation would go “to the back of the queue” for a USA trade deal if they opted to leave.
Xi said that China and Brazil should maintain high-level interactions to bolster industrial, economic and trade cooperation.
In Hangzhou, Park will also hold summits with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Italy, her office said.
The scale and rock-bottom prices of China’s exports have hit a nerve in working-class communities world-wide.
In the July gathering of G20 ministers, they cautioned that subsidies and other types of support from governments or government-sponsored institutions can cause market distortions and contribute to global excess capacity.
Analysis by the European Central Bank in 2014 found that the big G20 meetings have had at best “a mild calming impact on market developments” even at the height of the global financial crisis.
France and Italy are already pushing their spending limits under European Union budget rules, so attempts to revitalise their economies would have to come from potentially painful labour reforms that would anger influential interest groups and be slow to have an impact. And Britain, which until recently wanted to turn its big deficit into a surplus by 2020, is considering fiscal stimulus to offset the shock Brexit vote.
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“No grand joint declaration as we saw early in the administration, no celebration – perhaps some agreements on climate change – but a pretty rough and scratchy relationship”, Green said.
