The Group of 20 (G20) summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, began on Saturday with an “opening declaration” despite the U.S. boycott and several other national leaders choosing not to attend.
China’s state-run Global Times gave triumphalist coverage to Saturday’s opening despite Chinese dictator Xi Jinping being one of the leaders who skipped the summit:
Despite the US’ boycott and pressure, global leaders attending the event reached a broad consensus on urgent issues including disaster resilience, debt sustainability, just energy transitions and critical minerals, and adopted the G20 South Africa Summit’s Leaders’ Declaration on the opening day.
Chinese observers highlighted that the adoption of the joint declaration, over the objections of the US and its summit boycott, signals that China and other Global South countries have become increasingly important in terms of global governance, giving them a bigger seat at the table. Behind this lies broad consensus among Global South countries that the China-proposed Global Governance Initiative (GGI) has won wide support and is playing a key role in promoting true multilaterism, along with highly effective efforts that have been made to this end.
The Global Times quoted other Chinese state media that hailed the summit as “a pivotal moment for Africa as it seeks to elevate its role in global governance and advance development priorities shared across the Global South.”
The Chinese Communist Party media outlet savored the awkward ending of the G20 summit, which was supposed to feature a ceremonial handoff to the United States as the next country to hold the rotating presidency. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa refused to hold the handoff ceremony because the U.S. was only willing to send the charge d’affaires of the South African embassy to participate.
The closing declaration from the G20 summit – which was unveiled at the beginning of the summit, in a break from the usual protocol – was churlishly worded to omit the usual references to next year’s host nation and president, instead merely looking forward to “working together” with the United States.
Other international media outlets adopted frameworks similar to Chinese state media, such as Reuters on Monday describing the summit as “a rare victory this weekend for multilateralism after overcoming the boycott and objections of its most powerful member, the United States.”
“The outcome infuriated the United States, next year’s G20 host. The White House accused South Africa of weaponizing its presidency to undermine the G20’s founding principles on unanimous consensus,” Reuters reported. “It said U.S. President Donald Trump would restore its ‘legitimacy’ while hosting next year.”
Michael Bociurkiw of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasian Center told Reuters that other G20 leaders were “getting fed up” with Trump, so issuing a joint statement in defiance of the U.S. boycott could “set a new approach” to dealing with him.
“I think the big message coming out of this G20 is that despite the geopolitical bullying that exists, despite the power of the U.S., that countries can come together and still get stuff done,” Oxfam America senior director Nabil Ahmed told the leftist New York Times (NYT) on Sunday.
The NYT account of the summit was less upbeat than most, noting that Ramaphosa never came up with a good answer when he was caught lying about the White House supposedly changing its mind to attend the Johannesburg event at the last minute, and he made another false statement to the media when he claimed the summit declaration enjoyed unanimous approval, when Argentina objected to it.
“We note with deep respect the views expressed by Argentina. We will, with great respect, move ahead with the accepted declaration as the G20,” Ramaphosa said, not sounding very “multilateralist” at all.
Despite the glowing media coverage, other G20 leaders seemed nervous about what Trump might do next year when the United States holds the rotating presidency, such as trimming away the highly-politicized and expensive G20 “working groups” on subjects like “income inequality” and the environment to refocus the organization on its core functions. Trump administration officials have also spoken of excluding United Nations organizations from future summits.
The NYT said the other G20 leaders are not really under any illusions that they can “simply thumb their noses at Mr. Trump,” and they all know the declaration they signed was non-binding – in other words, pure political theater.
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