Most readers of foreign news pages this weekend will be assuming that US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing has been dominating everyone’s attention. But across Asia, Trump, with his massive business entourage, was not the only act in town this week.
At least two other major sets of meetings should not be overlooked. First, in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was hosting foreign ministers from the 10 Brics economies and a growing community of partners from the Global South.
And second, Shanghai saw a massive convergence of top officials from across the 21-member Apec grouping. Many will be travelling on from the more than 40 meetings in Shanghai to nearby Suzhou for the trade ministers’ meeting after.
Each set of meetings has its own distinctive narratives on the turbulent state of global affairs – it may sound surprising, but some may not see the Xi-Trump summit as the most important.
Diplomats around Trump and Xi have been at pains to deflate the expectations surrounding the summit. For the United States, the Iran war has been a massive and awkward distraction, which means preparations for the summit, which would normally be punctilious, have been cut very short.
Trump’s emphatically unilateral approach to political and economic diplomacy is clearly a priority at the heart of his “America first” agenda, and may make bilateral summits his negotiating template of choice. But this sits very uncomfortably with a Beijing hard-pressed to convince other trading partners it is a true champion of multilateral cooperation.
