Chinese President Hu Jintao had a specific goal in mind for the G20 meeting in Toronto: keep an extremely low profile and steer the conversation on global imbalances and economic recovery away from China's undervalued currency and its huge surpluses.
President Hu went so far as to ask that mild praise for Beijing's recent decision to make the yuan slightly more flexible be removed from the final communiqué. And he made no mention of the issue in his broad-brush speech to fellow G20 leaders.
"Our Chinese friends don't like to be singled out within a communiqué," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said when asked why a sentence welcoming the Chinese move was later removed.
By all accounts, the strategy of pre-emptively defusing growing anger over China's weak-currency policy and the decision to stay under the radar on other issues worked like a charm. And President Hu emerged from the summit as one of the big winners.
There was no "mobilization of intellectual and policy capacity" by Beijing or networking with other emerging countries in advance of the summit, said Wenran Jiang, chair of the University of Alberta's China Institute. "Their overall posture is to observe, rather than to propose or dictate."
President Hu did reiterate strong positions on certain key global issues still on the table from previous meetings, including the removal of trade barriers, long-term reform of the financial architecture and a bigger say for emerging countries in the workings of such international financial overseers as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
"Beyond those, the Chinese are not putting out big policy briefings," Prof. Jiang said. "I would say their posture is fairly mild. China clearly does not want to take the lead."
Developing countries hold 43 per cent of IMF voting rights and 44 per cent in the World Bank. So far the traditional powers, led by the U.S. and the European Union countries, are unwilling to transfer more than 5 per cent of the voting rights, a position re-emphasized at this meeting.
China hopes to get a final decision on the voting reform ahead of the Seoul summit in November.
In his speech, President Hu said China realizes its key role in helping to rebalance the world economy but stressed that change could not happen quickly. The final G20 statement talks of some countries initiating reforms to set the conditions for greater domestic consumption, including infrastructure spending and stronger social safety nets, needed to counter declines in advanced economies, but does not single out China, which has focused much of its resources and heavy stimulus spending on its export industries.
"It will take a long and complex process to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth of the world economy. It cannot be done overnight."
Privately, the Chinese leadership has warned that China will not allow itself to be made the scapegoat for the world's economic and fiscal woes.
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