The latest G-20 meeting has highlighted the competition for leadership in the Global South between India and China. Xi Jinping wanted to remove relevance from the summit by not attending it. This has been saved with a declaration of minimums on Ukraine and the inclusion of the African Union. The last meeting of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) decided to expand the group to Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran and the Gulf Emirates. Added to the autocracies of China and Russia and the troubled democracies of the remaining three are some dictatorial regimes. The undisguised purpose is to build a coalition to remake the US-led international order after World War II, rather than helping developing countries have a voice.
Beijing is afraid of being contaminated by democratic ideas that question the system, just as Vladimir Putin cannot tolerate a democratic Ukraine. China has a large and growing influence on developing countries through investments and loans that create dependency in recipient countries. In the technological and military competition between the US and China there is a tension between economic efficiency (with globally integrated production chains) and security. It is very difficult to limit the exchange of technology for military applications and not to do so for civilian ones. Tech companies like Apple have a lot of production and a lot of consumers in China. Now the Chinese state, in response to the restrictions imposed by the US, has banned its officials from using the iPhone.
India has a conflict with China, which has a democratic tradition and non-alignment between blocs, and can be a pivot towards the West despite the illiberal tendency of President Narendra Modi. The US is rapidly losing influence in the world, wants to strengthen the G-20 and treats New Delhi with great care (for example, in Modi's recent visit to Washington and Joe Biden's deference to the G-20).
The possible success of the Brics as an anti-West coalition shows that the West has done something wrong. Multilateral institutions such as the World Bank or the IMF have not provided effective support to developing countries, with Africa as a clear case in point. The US has promoted the G-20 declaration to strengthen multilateral institutions and to address the problems of debt unsustainability, the most relevant points of the New Delhi declaration. Reforming the Breton Woods institutions means transforming their governance and giving a voice to emerging countries (the presidency of the World Bank is still determined in the USA and that of the IMF in Europe). They complain that international regulation is not adapted to their idiosyncrasies and needs (I have heard this first hand in my experience teaching regulators in these countries).
For Western democracies, a dilemma arises when an investor from a company or funds controlled by an autocratic State appears. This is the case of the Saudi investment in Telefónica. The EU has embraced the concept of open strategic autonomy to deal with the dilemma between investment and control by a foreign State that may have strategic objectives. Democracy and respect for the rules drive free trade and international investment, not the other way around. We can therefore expect more restrictions in the future. The G-20 is imperfect, but it is good that the summit did not fail.
