China is a top priority for President Joe Biden as he arrives in India and Vietnam despite Chinese President Xi Jinping skipping the Group of 20 leaders’ summit.
But although the G20’s odd assortment of member countries has historically created difficulties for reaching consensus, Xi’s absence in New Delhi should make it easier for Biden and his Western allies to present a united front before the president travels to Vietnam, another nation that borders China, to firm up relations after the war.
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Notwithstanding Biden and his aides being diplomatic regarding the president’s priorities for the trip, China is the “800-pound gorilla,” according to Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Vice President Matthew Kroenig.
“China’s making these major infrastructure investments around the world — ports, bridges, roads — and has been gaining influence due to that,” Kroenig told the Washington Examiner. “So there’s been an interest in how do we counter that. We need to give countries in the developing world an option.”
“The free world’s response has been to try to provide incentives for the private sector in Europe, in the United States, to make investments,” he said. “But, as I said, since it’s such a weird grouping, it would be a little awkward to announce measures that are pretty clearly meant to counter China’s Belt and Road [Initiative] when China is a member of the body.”
The workaround? Underscoring Biden’s commitment to developing countries and emerging market partners through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which China also supports.
“That’s one of our main focuses heading into the G20: delivering on an agenda of fundamentally reshaping and scaling up the multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank and the IMF,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters this week during a pre-trip briefing.
Last month, Biden asked Congress for additional funds that would increase World Bank financing by more than $25 billion and establish lending options for low-income and middle-income countries, according to Sullivan. The president will implore the G20 to “endorse this level of ambition” and “deliver a broader vision of multilateral development banks that are better, bigger, and more effective,” per Sullivan. He, too, will be advocating “meaningful” debt relief for low- and middle-income countries so they can “regain their footing after years of extreme stress” exacerbated by climate change, migration, COVID-19, and Russia‘s war in Ukraine, the national security adviser said.
“He’ll be clear that the United States expects real progress on ongoing cases by the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Marrakesh next month,” Sullivan added of the Moroccan conference. “And he will be clear that we need all G20 members to be constructive and at the table with no exceptions.”
Sullivan repeated his defense of Biden’s ability to broker any agreement on World Bank and IMF reforms, even if Xi is not “at the table,” en route to New Delhi.
“One thing I would note, because I got the question a couple of times in the press briefing room about China and, you know, the fact that Xi Jinping is not coming — whether they would play spoiler and so forth,” he said Thursday on Air Force One. “But I would point out that if you look at the hosts of the G20 over the next few years: We have India this year, Brazil next year, South Africa the following year, and then the United States. And I think, along with those three countries — India, Brazil, and South Africa — the U.S. has a deep stake in stewarding the G20 and making sure that it remains a central mechanism for global coordination on all the major challenges we face.”
But with Biden’s overall job approval averaging a net negative 12 percentage points, 42% to 54%, and his economic management approval averaging a net negative 20 points, 38% to 58%, Sullivan additionally reiterated that foreign aid is important.
“Our perspective is that for a modest investment, from the point of view of the overall size of the U.S. budget, to put into ensuring greater stability, greater prosperity, greater capacity in the rest of the world, that is going to end up reducing the costs and burdens on working people in Scranton or Minneapolis or any of all your hometowns,” the national security adviser, who is from Minnesota, said earlier this week.
“And, frankly, that’s not some novel idea,” he continued. “That has been a bipartisan commitment of the United States for decades. And even the last administration, the biggest skeptic of all of this, made investments in foreign aid because those investments are in the naked self-interest of the United States, as well as being the right thing to do.”
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Biden departed for New Delhi and the G20 leaders’ summit on Thursday. There, the president is anticipated to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, 2 1/2 months after Modi’s state visit to the U.S., before attending G20 sessions on Saturday and Sunday, the first with the African Union as a permanent member of the organization, concerning climate, health, and technology, including artificial intelligence. Experts are mindful of a possible pull-aside discussion with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ahead of a much-hyped deal to normalize relations between the kingdom and Israel.
Biden is then scheduled to arrive in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday for sit-downs with Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong, and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh related to the South China Sea, technology, and the “painful shared legacy of the Vietnam War,” according to Sullivan. He will end his trip with a visit to the John Sidney McCain III Memorial.
