Beyond the instant outcomes of the G-20 Summit, one key takeaway with long run implications is the positioning of India as a key bridge to the “Global South” for Japan and the West, within the view of Japanese specialists.

“Japan sees a rivalry over the leadership of the ‘Global South’ between India and China, and it is in the interest of Japan and the G-7 that India plays a leading role in the ‘Global South’, not China,” stated Hiroyuki Akita, Tokyo-based strategic affairs commentator at Nikkei, in an interview with The Hindu.

Mr. Akita stated that was one of many key points for Japan within the lead-up to this yr’s G-20, a lot in order that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the May assembly of the G-7 international locations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.Okay. and the U.S.) in Hiroshima.

“As Chairman of the G-7 this year, it’s been a priority for Japan to collaborate with India as a bridge to narrow the divide on many issues between the G-7 and the G-11, that is the rest of the G-20 except for China and Russia, which are trying to counter the G-7 world order,” he stated.

The strategy has been to search out shared pursuits and customary floor, not on “values” that may divide however on points comparable to transparency and sustainability in investments, coping with debt crises, and local weather financing, key points that shall be mirrored within the G-20 outcomes.

India-China divide

The negotiations within the lead-up to the summit have introduced into sharp focus a widening India-China divide on multilateral and world points. Worsening relations within the final three years amid the on-going Line of Actual Control (LAC) crisis have coincided with widening positions on multilateral points that each international locations had a decade in the past labored collectively on, comparable to local weather change, a problem that has now largely light from the bilateral agenda as nicely. On debt crises confronted within the growing world, India has additionally more and more pointed to Chinese lending, beneath the 2013-launched Belt and Road Initiative which India didn’t be part of, as a trigger.

Liu Hong, vice-president of the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) in Beijing, stated the broader situation was “not about only India and China but how Asian countries as a whole can improve their ability to manage and influence global governance, including at the G-20, which, if you look at its foundation, as primarily been controlled by the West.”

“Bot just the G-20 but even the BRICS and SCO are platforms to discuss global issues and economic cooperation, but unfortunately because of geopolitical factors, the basis to cooperate is not stable,” he stated. “Especially in the last three years,” he added, “the communication channels [between India and China] have been broken.”