China rallied the Group of 20 around a call to use new levers to revive global growth, though the group’s nine-page statement was short on concrete steps and there were few signs that Beijing would lead by example.
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China has been criticized for its domination of the steel industry.
“President Xi accurately raised the alarm on the need to counter the increase in protectionism around the world”, said James Zimmerman, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
Xi said in a closing speech that leaders attending the summit chose to point out the way and set the course for the world economy. He noted the logo designed for the event of a bridge consisting of 20 lines in light green. Offers of vacations and encouragement for residents to go out of town had turned Hangzhou into a ghost town of empty streets for the meeting.
“If you’re looking for blood, steel overcapacity was the issue”, the official said.
“This will send a strong signal of G20′s commitment to promoting global growth, and help shore up market confidence and ensure stability of global financial markets”, Xi said.
A big concern for foreign investors in China is what they see as the increasing difficulty of doing business in China, driven by concern that new laws and policies are seeking to effectively shut out foreigners or make life very hard for them.
And China has been slow in closing down smokestack factories and liberalizing its own market.
Both countries said they would “refrain from competitive devaluations and not target exchange rates for competitive purposes”, the fact sheet said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday he and U.S. President Barack Obama had managed to reach understanding of each other and of problems facing the two countries, TASS reports. Mr. Xi discussed North Korea with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
“We’ve got more work to do together to keep the global economy growing”.
The leaders unanimously adopted the G20 Blueprint on Innovative Growth, which reflects their desire to find the right path toward sustainable and healthy growth.
At a G-20 finance ministers’ meeting prior to the summit, the finance chiefs seemed more concerned about protectionism, given that growth in trade has been slower than that of global gross domestic product, a senior Japanese Finance Ministry official said. And the ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement by China and the U.S.in Hangzhou on Saturday and their recent bilateral deals point to a promising start for the fulfillment of that mission.
“China is a status quo actor in worldwide economics”, said Derek Scissors, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who specializes in the Chinese economy.
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“There is no way for a country to escape from stagnation in a global community without a common effort”, Castro said.
