‘China a multilateral player’: G20 Sherpa on Xi Jinping not attending Summit

China is a multilateral player and multilateral issues are very different from bilateral ones, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said on Friday.

“China is a multilateral player. In multilateral discussions, the issues are very different from bilateral issues and the Chinese discuss issues of growth, and development from their perspective”, Kant said when asked about Chinese president Xi Jinping not attending the G20 Summit in New Delhi.

“The challenge about any multilateral discussion is you have to bring consensus across every issue, every country has veto power. We’ve been able to work with every single country and bring them on board”, he added while speaking at the press briefing.

With Jinping skipping the global meet, Chinese premier Li Qiang will be attending the event in the national capital. The 70-year-old Chinese president is the second head of a state of a G20 member country after Russia’s Vladimir Putin to skip the Summit.

Earlier, external affairs minister S Jaishankar had sought to play down the issue of G20 member state leaders skipping the Summit. “At the end of the day, countries are represented by whoever they have chosen to represent them. The levels of representation do not become the final determinant of the position of a country”, the minister had said.

US President Joe Biden had said he was ‘disappointed’ that Jinping planned to skip the Summit. “I am disappointed…but I am going to get to see him,” Biden, who will arrive in New Delhi today ahead of the summit, said.

Jinping’s decision to skip the G20 Summit comes days after China released its ‘standard map’ which sparked a lot of controversy, showing Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin showing as its territory.