Koch: China's B20 and T20 Leadership in the G20

Presentation prepared for the International Symposium on Connecting the World and the Future, Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, November 8-9, 2019.

Introduction

Since 2008 the G20 leaders have met 14 times, including once under the leadership of China in 2016. The leaders of these 19 systemically significant countries plus the European Union come together regularly to discuss an increasingly wide-ranging agenda that confronts the challenges they face and to make ambitious decisions to improve the lives of their citizens as well as those in the rest of the world. To determine that agenda requires input and consultation, both among the G20 members and with communities outside their government bureaucracies. And when they return home after their summits, they must find ways to implement those decisions.

Both cases require engaging with civil society (Koch 2016). As a result, over time, the G20 has become part of what some observers have called a solar system, with the G20 shining brightly at the centre and several planets – known as engagement groups – orbiting around it (Alexander and Löschmann 2016). And just as with the solar system that includes our planet, the G20's solar system consists of planets of varying sizes and impact.

For the most part, the engagement groups serve several purposes. They create a network of organizations and associations, in all the G20 members, whose work relates to some aspect of the G20 agenda, such as labour or gender issues. This network can strengthen the underpinnings of the G20's policy development and members' implementation at home. The groups organize meetings and produce policy papers, which can become a resource for the officials preparing the summit, especially as these organizations often have direct experience in translating policies into action at a grass roots level, or have intimate knowledge of the relevant issues. The engagement groups typically organize events throughout the course of a G20's host presidency, and issue declarations or recommendations for the G20 leaders. They thus also function as an advocacy mechanism for urging action on particular issues or developing specific policies. Their meetings can also shine a spotlight on issues to help inform the global community about the G20 and the issues being addressed, especially through social media platforms and conventional media coverage.

There are now eight official engagement groups recognized by the G20: Business 20 (B20), the Labour 20 (L20), which brings together the labour unions; the Civil 20 (C20), which is a broad assortment of nongovernmental organizations; the Think 20 (T20) of think tanks and academics; the Youth 20 (Y20), which brings together delegations of youth leaders from all the members; the Women's 20 (W20), established by the Turkish presidency in 2014 to focus on women's empowerment and gender issues; and the most recent additions of the Science 20 (S20) from the science academies, begun in 2016 under the German presidency; and the Urban 20 (W20), which brings together G20 mayors who first met in 2018 under the Argentinean presidency. Each engagement group is usually led by an organization in the G20's host country, and the resources made available by the presidency vary from host to host: some hosts provide no resources at all, some might provide some financial support for organizing the events. Participants, however, normally pay their own expenses to travel to the meetings.

There are also some unofficial engagement groups, which have been active from the early days of the G20 summits. These include the Young Entrepreneurs' Alliance (YEA), the G(irls)20 and the Faith 20.

This paper will focus on two engagement groups in which China has made a significant impact: the B20, which is oldest and perhaps most well-established engagement group, and the T20, which serves a different role from most of the other engagement groups.

B20

The G20 leaders and their finance ministers soon realized that an effective response to the 2008 global financial crisis required cooperation from the global business community. For the Toronto Summit in June 2010, host Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and his finance minister Jim Flaherty invited two business leaders from every G20 member to provide advice on and build business support for the G20's work (Hajnal 2019). They met with the G20 finance ministers to offer a "'reality check' from the front lines of global commerce" and engage in a discussion on the fiscal situation facing governments, financial and market regulations, and the state of the global economy (Manley 2010). For the Seoul Summit, a more elaborate process was developed to engage with the B20: the Korean presidency invited 12 business leaders to convene working groups organized under the four themes of trade and foreign direct investment, financial stability, green growth, and corporate social responsibility (B20 2010a). Several meetings were held leading up to the Seoul Summit, and recommendations were presented to the G20 finance ministers for their meetings as well as the leaders' personal representatives – or sherpas – preparing the leaders' summit (B20 2010b).

Several G20 leaders attended the B20 summit, which was held in Seoul just before the leaders met. The timing made it possible for G20 leaders to participate, including Korean president Lee Myung-Bak, Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, British prime minister David Cameron, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan and South African president Jacob Zuma.

Since then, each G20 presidency has appointed a B20 chair, who has organized the B20. Although the format and structure vary from presidency to presidency, the task force structure became entrenched, starting with groups working on financing growth, promoting trade and investment, supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), addressing labour and employment issues, and also addressing what is now known as integrity and compliance (formerly anti-corruption). Recently, new task forces have been formed to address evolving issues, such as the digital economy and resource efficiency. With more than 100 business representatives participating, sometimes remaining involved over several years, these groups continue their work from one presidency to the next, with a brief interlude under the 2019 Japanese presidency. Under Saudi Arabia's 2020 presidency, there will likely be six task forces once again.

The timing of each B20 summit is also coordinated with the G20 presidency. To increase the possibility of influencing the negotiations of the G20 leaders' statements, it can be effective to proposing well-developed recommendations early in the summit preparations, so that the sherpas as well as the ministers who hold summit-related responsibilities have an opportunity to incorporate and build on them. B20 summits have most often been held several months before the G20 summits, unlike the one at Seoul, and events are also often held around relevant ministerial meetings such as those of energy or finance ministers.

However, many business leaders seek to combine the B20 with an opportunity to meet with the heads of government and state and prefer to schedule their meeting at the same time as the leaders' summit. The 2015 Turkish presidency used a combination: with policy papers prepared and presented well in advance, and the B20 summit itself in in Antalya on the eve of the G20 summit, although logistical issues made it difficult for there to be much interaction between the G20 and B20 participants.

China's 2016 presidency also used a combination. B20 China, led by Jiang Zengwei and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, held several meetings and conferences in China and abroad to focus on the work of the five task focus: Trade and Investment, Infrastructure, Financing Growth, Employment, SME Development. There was also a special forum on anti-corruption. The culminating event, however, was a B20 summit on September 3–4 and the G20 leaders meeting on September 4–5. This made it possible for the leaders of several G20 countries, including Argentine president Mauricio Macri, Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, as well as the heads of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization to participate (B20 2016). President Xi Jinping (2016) welcomed the 1,100 participants with a keynote speech titled "A New Starting Point for China's Development: A New Blueprint for Global Growth," in which he said that by "convening the B20 Summit on the eve of the G20 Summit, China wishes to fully pool the ideas and wisdom of the business community." That community, he said, had "provided important recommendations for G20 policy making and contributed positively to the Hangzhou Summit."

B20 Impact on the G20

For several years, the B20 performed a valuable function of holding the G20 responsible for its promises. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), which has been closely involved in the B20 since the Seoul Summit, created the G20 CEO Advisory Group to serve as a "platform aimed at generating solid policy work before, during and after the G20 Summit events" (ICC 2011). The following year it launched its first "ICC G20 Business Scorecard," which assessed the G20's pledges from a business perspective. The scorecards assessed the progress by the G20 collectively, rather than evaluating the performance of individual members.

To carry out its assessment, the CEO Advisory Group focused on policy groupings corresponding to the B20 task forces along with issues it considered priorities for G20 attention. Scores were based on three criteria: recognition in a G20 summit declaration of an issue raised by business; action taken by the G20 in the form of setting a goal, establishing a task force, calling on an international organization to act, and so on; and adequacy of the G20's response or action (ICC 2016).

The last scorecard published evaluated the 2016 Hangzhou Summit's response to the 20 recommendations prepared by the B20 China, which focused on the work of the five task forces (ICC 2016). It also evaluated recommendations prepared on energy sustainability by the ICC G20 CEO Advisory Group, which were presented to the G20 energy ministers at their meeting in June 2016. In total, the scorecard examined 25 recommendations and drew also on the expertise of the International Organisation of Employers and the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The ICC scorecard gave the 2016 Hangzhou Summit an overall score of 2.3 (out of 3) for the seven major policy groups evaluated, which was the highest overall score since ICC began its monitoring (ICC 2016). The highest scores were on financing growth, infrastructure and employment. The lowest score was on SME development.

It also found that the G20 leaders made some notable responses to business at Hangzhou, including delivering the G20 Guiding Principles for Global Investment Policymaking and outlining commitments to energy and climate challenges (ICC 2016). The leaders also, for the first time, encouraged co-operation on intellectual property rights.

T20

Most of the engagement groups involve some sort of advocacy. They often have a well-defined agenda of issues they want the G20 to address. They hold the G20 to high standards and recommend ways to meet those standards. The T20, however, is an opportunity for think tanks and academics to produce ideas and evidence-based research that G20 policy makers can draw on.

There has been some form of involvement by think tanks in the G20 summit since the preparations for the London Summit in 2009, when a group of experts produced a proposal, accepted by the leaders, to increase the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights by $250 million to manage the economic crisis that was getting worse at that time (Kirton 2016).

However, the first formal meeting of the T20 was held in 2012 during Mexico's year as host, attended by Mexico's sherpa as well as representatives of think tanks and government officials from many, but not all, G20 members (Hajnal 2019, 105). However, not all the G20 sherpas were equally enthusiastic with the idea of continuing such a forum (Hajnal 2019, 106). The following year, there was a hastily organized T20 summit in Moscow, just as the Russian presidency got underway. It coincided with the first sherpa meeting to organize the St. Petersburg Summit, which allowed an opportunity for some of the T20 participants to report on the discussions to the sherpas. Under Australia's presidency, the T20 was led by a former G20 finance deputy official now based at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. As with the previous year, there was one T20 gathering, in Sydney in December 2013, timed to coincide with a sherpa meeting so the T20's advice could ideally be taken up by the preparatory process for the leaders' meeting that would take place almost a year later in November 2014. The Sydney meeting had good representation from many G20 members had prepared papers prepared in advance on the key issue areas on the G20 agenda including financing for investment and infrastructure, trade liberalization and development (Callaghan and Jorgenson 2013).

This approach intensified in Turkey's year in 2015. T20 Turkey saw itself as an "ideas bank" for the G20, and took Australia's approach of developing targeted policy papers (T20 2015). After a kickoff event in Istanbul in February, there were several workshops held in other G20 capitals over the course of the year, with the highpoint being a main meeting in Bodrum in June at the same time as a G20 sherpa meeting. Policy papers and recommendations were presented to working groups, ministerial meetings and sherpas to offer policy options to the G20 preparatory process. In November in Antalya, at the same time the B20 held its own summit, the T20 held the Global Thinkers Platform, on the eve of the leaders' meeting.

Building on this increased level of activity, China's T20 also kicked off its presidency with a meeting in Beijing in December 2015. Unlike Turkey and Australia, which had one local think tank responsible for coordinating the T20 program, China drew on the expertise of three: the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and its Institute of World Economics and Politics and the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China (RDCY), both in Beijing, and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS).

These three well-established think tanks brought a depth and breadth to the T20 process. CASS and SIIS have long had a relationship with China's government by producing research and support for its foreign policy. RDCY, however, was founded only in 2013. Under the leadership of Chen Yulu, who was credited with suggesting that China host the 2016 summit, RDCY saw a need for more specialized research to support both the G20's response to the post-crisis situation and China's role in reshaping world order (Wang Wen 2015). It hosted an international forum in August 2013 with participants from think tanks in most G20 members, and again in 2014 and 2015. These conferences, like the T20 itself, brought together officials and academics, and filled a gap in G20 preparations. By RDCY's 2015 meeting, Chinese officials began to attend, which indicated official recognition.

CASS, SIIS and RDCY began organizing events even before China's presidency began, with a conference in April 2015 in Washington DC co-organized with the Brookings Institution. More than 500 participants from 25 countries gathered in Beijing in July for the T20 summit, leaving enough time for more recommendations from its participants to feed into the final preparations for the Hangzhou Summit scheduled for early September (Wang Yiqing 2015). In welcoming the participants, President Xi Jinping's G20 sherpa and China's vice foreign minister Li Baodong recognized the T20's value in providing research-based policy suggestions. Over the course of the two-day meeting, T20 participants came to a consensus on a set of recommendations that were sent to the G20 leaders through the Chinese sherpa office.

The following year, the German presidency followed with the T20 hosting again shared between two institutions, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the German Development Institute. The German co-chairs instituted a task force structure to develop policy proposals, not unlike the B20's process, with the T20's papers drawing on the research, analysis and expertise produced by the think tank members. The Kiel Institute saw a need for creating some form of a long-term framework for international policy advice to underpin the work of the T20 and contribute to other multilateral forums such as the G7. It launched the Global Solutions Initiative, which has held an international conference that brings together not only think tanks and academics but also business leaders, officials from international institutions and government officials every spring in Berlin (Kiel Institute 2017).

The co-chairing tradition continued under Argentina's G20 presidency. The 2018 T20 was led by the Centre for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth (CIPPEC) and the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI), which organized a series of expert meetings and official events. There were 10 task forces that focused on issues such as the digital economy, climate action, food security, gender economic equity and co-operation with Africa and produced more than 80 policy briefs. The work culminated in the T20 summit in September, which opened up with the presentation of the T20 Communiqué, containing recommendations, to Argentina's President Mauricio Macri.

With only six months between the G20's Buenos Aires Summit on November 30–December 1, 2018, and the Osaka Summit on June 28-29, 2019, Japan's T20 did not have much time to develop the same quantity of material for the G20 officials to consider. Nonetheless, the Asian Development Bank Institute organized a kickoff event in Tokyo to launch the program and a T20 summit in May, where the recommendations developed by the 10 task forces, which now included issues such as aging and the Sustainable Development Goals. Once again, the recommendations were presented directly to the host leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Saudi Arabia's T20 will again have two co-chairs, the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre and the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies. They are organizing 10 task forces, once again, to prepare policy proposals for the G20 leaders to consider.

T20's Impact on the G20

The G20 Research Group, which has long been monitoring how well G20 members keep the promises made at each summit, has begun evaluating how well T20 recommendations are taken up by the G20. It begins by identifying the commitments in the G20 leaders' declarations that are measurable, politically binding, precisely articulated, future oriented and collectively agreed. It then matches those commitments against the recommendations using a methodology developed for assessing the outcome documents of United Nations high-level meetings on non-communicable diseases (Kirton, Kulik and Bracht 2016). Finally, it compares the matched commitments against the G20 Research Group's compliance assessments.

For the assessment of the impact of the 2016 T20 Summit on the Hangzhou Summit, 22 recommendations contained in the T20 Chair's Statement were compared to the 211 commitments made by G20 leaders. The T20 Chair's Statement contains a summary of the priority recommendations drawn from a longer list of suggestions recommended by the think tanks gathered in Beijing (T20 2016a, 2016b). The assessment found that 19 (86%) of the 22 recommendations matched Hangzhou leaders' commitments. Although most of the T20's recommendations focused on trade, those on labour and unemployment, reform of international financial institutions (IFIs), development and infrastructure had a 100% match. Trade came next at 80%, and macroeconomic policy and financial regulation at 75%.

Of the 29 priority Hangzhou Summit commitments assessed by the G20 Research Group for compliance by the G20, 10 commitments matched fully one or more of T20 recommendations on macroeconomic policy, information and communication technologies and the digital economy, IFI reform, financial regulation, development, and trade. The researchers calculated a weighted average of 86% compliance. The average compliance for the 19 Hangzhou commitment assessments that did not match any T20 recommendations was 22% lower, at 64%.

From this research, it appears that the G20 Hangzhou commitments with high compliance were backed by a T20 recommendation. China's well-developed T20 process, which drew on the evidence and research provided by an international network of think tanks and academics, evidently had a positive impact on the G20's deliberations and its promises.

Indeed, G20 Research Group's assessments of the T20 recommendations for the subsequent summits have shown fewer matches with the leaders' declarations, with a 26% match between T20 Germany and the 2017 Hamburg Summit documents and a 24% match between T20 Argentina and the 2018 Buenos Aires Summit, compared to China's 86% (Kirton and Warren 2017; Warren and Kirton 2019). More research might provide some insights what might be learned from China's hosting to carry forward to future T20 presidencies.

Conclusion

The unique system of engagement groups has created communication channels between the G20 and various aspects of civil society. Increasingly, the engagement groups have been joining forces, as in 2017 when the B20, T20 and C20 task forces issued a joint statement on a sustainable energy transition or just before the 2019 Osaka Summit when five engagement groups including the T20 made a joint statement on eliminating violence from the workplace (B20, C20 and T20 2017; C20, L20, T20, W20 and Y20 2019).

These engagement groups enable the G20 to increase its transparency and public accountability, which can increase the public's perception of the value and legitimacy of the forum (Luckhurst 2019). By creating networks within and among all the G20 members, they contribute to civil society globally and domestically, in ways that have direct impacts on policy and governance, as was seen with both the B20 and the T20 during China's 2016 G20 presidency.

References

Callaghan, Mike, and Hugh Jorgenson (2013). "Think 20 Papers 2014: Policy Recommendations for the Brisbane G20 Summit." (Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy).

Hajnal, Peter I. (2019). The G20: Evolution, Interrelationships, Documentation, 2nd, revised ed. (Abingdon: Routledge).

Kirton, John, Julia Kulik and Caroline Bracht (2016). "Report on Objective Six: Impact of the Port of Spain Summit on Regional and Global Institutions" (Global Health Diplomacy Program, University of Toronto).

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