Mar 31st 2009 | BEIJING
From Economist.com
Chinese officials assume an increasingly self-confident tone towards the rest of the world.
Now, with the West in economic disarray, China’s leaders see an opportunity if not to supplant American power, at least to start wielding a bit more of the clout that they feel they deserve given recent, rapid economic growth and the country’s importance to a global recovery.
Mr Zhou suggested the creation of a new international reserve currency, managed by the IMF, to replace the dollar.
China Daily, a state-owned English-language newspaper, put it, "what China is going to do is be seen and be heard" at the G20.
...Meanwhile, from Russia via Breitbart
Russia and China are coordinating proposals on a new global currency that could replace the US dollar as a reserve currency to prevent a repeat of the global economic crisis, the Kremlin said on Monday.
"We have received proposals from our colleagues in China, detailed proposals," President Dmitry Medvedev's top economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich said. "Our positions are very similar.
"We have similar positions on the development of the international financial architecture," he told reporters.
Ahead of the Group of 20 summit in London later this week, the Kremlin has published a raft of proposals to overhaul the global economic order, including plans for a supra-national currency that could replace the US dollar.
...from UK via The Guardian
On eve of G20 summit, new blow to Gordon Brown
Senior cabinet members dampen expectations of global spending deal
Ministers were struggling to maintain momentum for the G20 summit last night after it emerged that any spending decisions would be deferred to a later meeting, further narrowing the scope of this week's London talks, which have been plagued by divisions between European leaders and Gordon Brown.
dampen expectations and tried to clarify the aims of Thursday's G20 meeting. All said it had never been about securing agreement on extra public spending. "This is about trying to tackle an exceptional economic crisis ... This G20 summit was never about writing national budgets," said Miliband.
Last week any suggestion of a fresh round of global stimulus was thwarted by an unlikely coalition of the Bank of England's governor, Mervyn King, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Czech prime minister and EU president, Mirek Topolanek, who all spoke out separately.
Speaking to a regional congress of her Christian Democratic party in Berlin at the weekend, Merkel said: "The world stands at a watershed. We cannot afford crises like this every 10 years. We need a global order for the financial markets, the likes of which we've never seen, in order to learn the lessons from this disaster."
...from the Times of India
All eyes to be on India, China at G20 summit
1 Apr 2009, 0256 hrs IST, Shankar Raghuraman, TNN
On Board The PM's Aircraft: Manmohan Singh strode on the red carpeted tarmac,
climbed the stairs leading up to his private suite in the
Boeing 747, waved back within
a minimalist arc as he is wont to, and went in. He was 30 minutes late, but looked purposeful. As the captain announced departure we hoped the visit to the G20 summit in London will indeed serve some purpose.
With the world reeling under the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s, there's fervent hope that G20 leaders' April 2 summit will come up with a coordinated plan to pull the world out of the hole it's sliding into. The cost of failure is too high to contemplate.
Foeign secretary Shivshankar Menon said that issues other than the economy were likely to figure in the Manmohan-Obama meeting. The US new policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan and India's assertion that the world must recognize Pakistan's key role in global terror were always likely to figure and the Lahore attack on Monday will only add to the urgency with which the issue is addressed.
The meeting will also be watched for the atmospherics between the two leaders. While there is little doubt that Indo-US relations will continue to grow closer under Obama, many will be watching their body language and try to guage whether the chemistry matches up to the Manmohan-Bush bonding.
The world will keenly watch what China does. The summit is seen by the western media as China's first major chance to flex its muscles. Part of the reason lies in the fact that the wheel has turned full circle since the G20 was formed a decade ago in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis.
That was when the developed world was sitting on its high horse and talking down to the Third World, Asia in particular, on how it must get its house in order. Today, roles have been reversed with the developed world desperately hoping that China and India can pull the world out of recession. China has also given indications that it recognizes its international clout and means to use it. The most obvious pointers to this confidence have been suggestions on replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency of choice and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao saying that China hoped the US would do whatever it takes to safeguard the Asian gaints trillion dollar investments in US treasury bonds.
To return to the differences that beset the G20, much of Europe sees greater regulation of the financial sector as the key to resolving the crisis and preventing its recurrence, but is reluctant and fiscally constrained when it comes to offering larger stimulus packages. The US feels Europe must cough up much more by way of a stimulus, but is averse to the idea of stringent regulation.
You know in many languaes, countries, continents, thisG20 is a significant event that one can feel it might bring many <Down< or many <Up<.</p>