A news report by China.org.cn on the 13th G20 summit in Buenos Aires:

 

The 13th G20 summit is being held in Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1, the first time for a South American country to host it.

Over the past decade, the G20 summit has developed from an emergency mechanism to cope with financial crisis to an important platform for global governance especially in the financial and economic sectors. The countries involved coordinate with each other in making macro-economic and financial policies, and heading off protectionism in trade and investment.

As the world’s second-largest economy, the largest trader in goods, and one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, China is playing an important role for the effective functioning of the G20.

At the G20 summit held in Hangzhou, China in 2016, China proposed “building an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive world economy” and contributed Chinese concepts and wisdom to the world’s sustainable development.

The G20 summits over the past decade have shared inter-related themes: promoting balanced and sustainable growth of the world economy, with the host country proposing specific subjects for each summit according to the practical situations.

Argentina has proposed three themes: employment, infrastructure construction for economic growth and sustainable development of the grain industry.

There are some new circumstances arising in the current international economic situation. In some countries, particularly some developed countries, trends towards populism, unilateralism and anti-globalization have emerged.

The United Kingdom and the European Union have been embroiled in seemingly endless negotiations known as Brexit; the United States and the EU have not resolved their trade disputes through repeated rounds of negotiations; The U.S. has provoked trade conflicts with China; due to divergence on some important issues related to trade and investment, the APEC summit in Papua New Guinea failed to produce a joint declaration, and so on. The G20 summit is an arena for the struggle between multilateralism and unilateralism, as well as international cooperation and protectionism. It thus attracts wide attention.

On the sidelines of the summit, President Xi Jinping will meet with American President Donald Trump. It is already a habit for the leaders of China and the U.S. to take the opportunity of an international conference to hold a meeting. However, this year is different, as trade frictions are seriously affecting Sino-American ties. During a phone call in early November, the two leaders expressed their common wish of maintaining stable and healthy development of bilateral relations, and expanding their economic and trade cooperation. We hope their meeting this time can deliver positive results.