The new steering group of the global economy is the mounting power of the G20 and not the defunct G7, writes Gamal Nkrumah The United States under the administration of President Barack Obama has failed to show that it is unafraid of the swivel-eyed anti-imperialist leaders and managers of the emerging economies -- most of them colonies and neo-colonies of yesteryear. It is against this backdrop that the ascent of the Group of 20 (G20), including advanced and emerging economies, must supplant the redundant G7. The world cannot but acknowledge this truism. The West, or the G7 at any rate, must acknowledge that the G20 is no longer just the steering committee-in-waiting, but has usurped the G7 itself. The US, and its G7 partners, used the recently convened G7 summit in Istanbul to publicly avow that they understand that the sun is setting on Western powers. The wafer-thin communiqué at the end of the Istanbul summit drove the point home. Moreover, the fact that the summit was convened in an emerging market -- Turkey -- only accentuated the point. The G20 is effectively the vital moving force of global economic dynamics. So it must set out its priorities. The emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil are in a position to articulate which of their objectives are most important, and which are less so. The world must take into account several important factors. First, that China -- the single most important emerging economy -- is nominally a communist country, run by an omniscient political party supervising an essentially capitalist economy. The Chinese call the system "market socialism", while many in the West derisively refer to it as "state capitalism". Whatever it is, it is the system that will effectively steer the global economy out of recession. The world, and the G20, has not yet set out what this in effect means. For the time being, the Western world is displaying a reluctance to see the emerging nations for what they truly are. India, not the US, is the world's largest democracy. India is yet another rising economic power, albeit politically radically different from China. It is important to understand that not all the emerging economies have a unified agenda. China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies have their own specific agendas. Yet policymakers in these emerging economies have not yet mastered the ability to articulate their goals and objectives. This is especially apparent at international forums. The critical element is a lack of consensus among G20 nations. All are in agreement about the need to overcome the global recession. However, they are vague as to precisely how this goal is to be achieved. It is clear that a lack of ideological agreement is hindering the process and effecting change. This involves an impossibly ambitious set of aims -- to overcome the economic meltdown and to accelerate development upholding human and social rights, and Western-style democracy. Popular hopes for development are the next battlefield as far as the developing countries of the South are concerned. Capital formation and economic growth in China over the past three decades have surprised the world. Economic development is no longer confined to the coastal provinces. As rapid economic growth spreads westwards, China's economic standing will continue to strengthen. The Chinese economy has overtaken the Japanese as the world's second largest economy. In a couple of decades it will catch up with the US. Long forgotten are the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). China today is a shining example of the curious -- and extremely successful -- mixing of central planning and market-oriented growth. The Chinese policymakers seem to understand that there remains a compelling case for Communist Party control over not only political proceedings, but economic decision-making as well. China offers a viable alternative to the West, and the developing countries of the South are taking account of developments in China. The Western pattern of development is not the only one available to them. The Chinese model has its attractions. But of course the West can never accept China as a model for the rest of the world -- the sticking point being the rejection of multi-party democracy as embodied in the ghost of Tiennamen. However, there is the pivotal need to understand that the Chinese model is not the only one. India and Brazil are both developing countries with hordes of impoverished peasants and slum-dwellers but no central planning. They both hang on tenaciously to their respective democracies -- India's old and well tested, Brazil's relatively new but vibrant -- both full of holes. The outbreak of the global financial crisis has proven beyond doubt that the G7 single-handedly is incapable of steering the global economy out of recession. It has also shown developing countries that they must seek alternatives to the Western models. However, the key concern of the developing countries of the South and the moral of the transition of global power from the West to the emerging countries of the South is that "big" does matter. The rising importance and impressive performance of countries like China, India and Brazil owe more to the fact that they are hugely populous and sprawling than to the correctness of their political and economic systems. Small is most certainly far from beautiful.
