"The G20, as a better mechanism, may replace the G8 in the future," said Xiao Geng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center.
He explained that politics is the issue of one single country, while economy involves the whole world. We need efficient international cooperation to solve the current global financial crisis.
WTO is an international platform to talk about trade problems. We also need a similar organization in which we can talk about today's financial and monetary problems.
The G8+5, as an organization of industrialized powers plus some leading emerging economies, is turning to similar direction as the G20. G20 has good efficiency and a larger coverage than G8+5, and therefore is a platform with more potential.
The G8's expansion to include five emerging markets is a reaction towards the emerging economies, explained Professor Jin Canrong, associate dean of the School of International Studies, RUC.
In the first half of the 1990s, the G7 enjoyed its most splendid era, with most of the major issues in the world were discussed by the seven countries.
At that time, the US played a leading role in the G7/G8. Its dominating position also prevented conflicts inside the group. In 1997, Russia formally joined the G7, resulting in the Group of Eight, or G8. It marked the G7/G8's efforts to become a broader organization, but the divergence between Russia and the western powers has been gradually hurting the group's influence.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, some developing countries have become emerging economies thanks to their adopting market economy and opening up. It is estimated that in 2009, the ratio of GDP of the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) within the global total will fall below 50%.
Jin noted that compared with G20, G8 lacks efficiency as well as balance. In the G8+5 mechanism, the "5" (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) are more like a subsidiary of the group and have much smaller influence than the "8". The UN is well balanced but it lacks efficiency. G20 is, however, a mechanism with both good balance and efficiency.
Industrialized western powers are now working together to cope with crisis, and new conflict between them is found. The US urged Japan and the European countries to invest more in order to promote domestic demand. Japan and the European countries argued that the reform of the traditional world financial system, which is based on the US dollar, was most urgent.
"The leaders may reach a basic consensus at the meeting," Jin said. "But we can't expect too much."
By People's Daily Online
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