WASHINGTON—President Joe Biden is scheduled to travel on Sept. 7 to India for the Group of 20 (G20) summit in New Delhi, where he plans to address the Chinese regime’s “coercive and unsustainable lending” practices, among other issues.
However, Chinese leader Xi Jinping won’t attend the two-day summit of leaders of the world’s richest countries, which begins on Sept. 9, Beijing stated on Sept. 4.
President Biden’s trip was also called into question after First Lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Sept. 4. However, the president has tested negative and is experiencing no symptoms of the illness, according to the White House.
“The President certainly is going to test on a regular cadence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a Sept. 5 press briefing.
She noted that all travelers, including the president, would be tested before traveling to Asia.
It’s India’s first time hosting the summit of the G20, which was formed in 1999 in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis.
President Biden’s key priority at the crucial meeting is to propose strengthening multilateral development banks, particularly the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as an alternative to China’s coercive lending program, according to the White House.
While China has become the world’s largest creditor in recent years, its aggressive lending strategy under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been criticized for its lack of transparency.
Since its launch in 2013, China’s BRI has poured billions of dollars into infrastructure projects across Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia. In recent years, however, Beijing has been accused of using “debt-trap diplomacy” to lure many nations into its orbit.
“We believe that there should be a high standard of noncoercive lending options available to low- and middle-income countries,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at the press briefing on Sept. 5.
That’s why the United States is championing “fundamentally reshaping and scaling up” these development banks, he noted.
‘Not About China’
In an effort to avoid enraging the regime in Beijing, Mr. Sullivan downplayed the main purpose of strengthening multilateral banks, claiming that it isn’t about China.“The World Bank reform is not about China, in no small part because China is a shareholder in the World Bank,” he said. “It’s for the entire international community.
“That is not a negative agenda. That is an affirmative agenda, a positive agenda.”
However, that was in stark contrast to what Mr. Sullivan said two weeks ago, when it was clear that the entire campaign was centered on countering China’s BRI.
“Given both the scale of the need and, frankly, the scale of [China’s] coercive and unsustainable lending through the Belt and Road Initiative, we need to ensure that there are high-standard, high-leverage solutions to the challenges countries are facing,” he told reporters during a conference call on Aug. 22.
Whether President Biden can unite other countries against the Chinese regime during the summit is unclear. Mr. Sullivan said the administration hopes G20 members will back U.S. efforts to reform development banks during the largest gathering of world leaders.
Stephanie Segal, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said the timing is right for the United States to highlight those development banks as an alternative to China.
“China has historically been a source of bilateral financing for many countries in the emerging market and developing world. And I think that source of financing has certainly slowed, if not entirely dried up,” she said during a CSIS press briefing previewing the G20 summit.
“I think it is a good moment for the U.S. to be able to kind of underscore those institutions and the U.S. commitment to those institutions as an alternative.”
Last year, the Group of Seven (G7) countries proposed a new infrastructure investment program for developing countries, known as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, to compete with China’s BRI.
Italy, the sole G7 country to join the BRI four years ago, has recently announced its intention to withdraw from the program.
Putin, Xi to Skip Summit
Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t attend the 2022 summit in Bali, Indonesia, and will also skip this year’s meeting in New Delhi. At the conclusion of the summit last year, the G20 leaders agreed to a joint communiqué in which they stated that “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine,” but “there were other views” as well.Instead of Mr. Xi, Premier Li Qiang will represent China at this year’s meeting. President Biden expressed disappointment after learning that the Chinese leader wouldn’t be attending. Both leaders last met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali on Nov. 14, 2022.
“I am disappointed, but I am going to get to see him,” President Biden told reporters on Sept. 3.
However, he didn’t explicitly say where and when he would meet with Mr. Xi.
“Nothing’s been scheduled,” Mr. Sullivan clarified during the press briefing. “The president has said before that he’s looking forward to picking up the conversation that he had with President Xi in Bali last year, and he fully intends to do that.”
President Biden is expected to have a bilateral meeting with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, on Sept. 8, on the sidelines of the summit.
After the conclusion of the summit, he’s scheduled to travel to Vietnam on Sept. 10. The president will meet with Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and other top Vietnamese leaders in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.
The United States and Vietnam will work to address challenges from the South China Sea to critical and emerging technologies “with an elevated and energized partnership,” according to Mr. Sullivan.
