About G20
G20 was initiated in 1999 and consists of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union (EU). Collectively, the G20 economies account for around 90 percent of the gross world product (GWP), 80 percent of world trade (or, if excluding EU intra-trade, 75 percent), two-thirds of the world population, and approximately half of the world land area.
Before the outbreak of global financial crisis in 2008, G20 meetings of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors were held to discuss international financial and monetary policies, reform of international financial institutions and world economic development. The first G20 Leaders' Summit was held in 2008. In September 2009, the Pittsburgh Summit announced G20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation, marking an important progress in global economic governance reform. The heads of the G20 nations held summits twice in 2009 and twice in 2010. Since the November 2011 Cannes summit, G20 summits have been held annually. The tenth Summit was held in Antalya ,Turkey in November, 2015.
Some guest countries and the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Financial Stability Board, the International Labor Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were also invited to attend G20 Summit.
About G20 Hangzhou Summit
The 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit was the eleventh meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20). It was held on 4–5 September 2016 in the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang. It was the first ever G20 summit to be hosted in China and the second in an Asian country after 2010 G20 Seoul summit was hosted in South Korea.
Themed “Building an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive world economy,” the summit aimed to implement the consensus reached at former G20 summits, and stress innovation, reform and development.
- Four Key Topics on the Agenda:
- 1. Breaking a new path for growth
- 2. Greater efficiency of global economic and financial governance
- 3. Robust international trade and investment
- 4. Inclusive and interconnected development
- Six “first-time” occurrences the G20 Summit has created, offering up a new direction for the G20 cooperation mechanism:
- 1. China set “breaking a new path for growth” as a key topic of the summit, which marked the first G20 summit with a focus on the mid to long term impetus of global growth.
- 2. In 2016, G20 members were dedicated to giving priority to development in global macro policy framework and draft action plans for the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for the first time.
- 3. Identifying priority fields, guiding principles and index system for structural reform. This was the first time in G20’s history that demonstrated the idea of addressing both symptoms and root causes to promote growth.
- 4. Setting out guiding principles for global investment policies. It was the first multilateral global investment rules framework, which was of pioneering significance.
- 5. For the first time, green finance was included on the Group of 20 summit agenda thanks to the efforts to make the financial sector contribute more to environmentally friendly economic growth around the globe.
- 6. The first Presidency Statement on Climate Change throughout G20’s history was released at the Sherpa Meeting in April, 2016, and China’s legislature completed domestic legal procedures for ratifying the Paris Agreement.
- Major Outcomes:
- 1. Formulating a G20 blueprint for the innovative growth of economy
- 2. For the first time in G20 histroy developing an action plan for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
- 3. Pushing the G20 to pledge on and take initiative in signing on and implementing the climate change agreement reached at the Paris Conference
- 4. Reinvigorating international trade and investment
- 5. Advancing international economic and the financial system reform
- 6. Deepening G20 anticorruption cooperation
- 7. Promoting G20 energy cooperation
