2016: The year China kicked G20 in the butt
Güven Sak, PhD
24 September 2016
The day after the G20 Hangzhou Summit in China, I read an article in the Jakarta Post. “The G20 needs a kick in the butt” was its title. The author, the veteran Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, was asking G20 countries to leave their 19th centuriesque national trenches, finally arrive in the 21st century and start thinking globally. Having read the G20 Hangzhou Communique and all the other relevant documents on the same day, I think that China followed Mr. Mahbubani’s wise counsel and gave the G20 a rather hard kick in its (rather voluminous) behind. This comes after a year of transformational leadership, in which China set the G20 on a course to become a 21st century mechanism. It is significant that China, which up until recently was thought of as a developing country, was the cou
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Erdoğan’s call for restraint
Güven Sak, PhD
17 September 2016
Turkey is now coming back from a long bayram holiday, or I should say from a feast, in the Russian philosopher Bakthin’s sense of the term. “The feast” says Bakthin, “has no utilitarian connotation (as has daily rest and relaxation after working hours.) On the contrary, the feast means liberation from all that is utilitarian, practical. It is a temporary transfer to the utopian world.” I guess that is why he also describes the feast as “the primary and indestructible ingredient of human civilization.” It might be the result of the feast he is coming from, but your analyst is definitely in a positive mood today.
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Low growth, bad politics?
Güven Sak, PhD
03 September 2016
The G20 Summit is to meet in Hangzhou, China this weekend, so be ready for a flood on global leaders’ meetings. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, started it off this Thursday. “We need forceful policies to avoid the low-growth trap” was the headline of her G20 briefing note. This is a reality check coming after the summer recess: either take measures to jumpstart growth, or get ready for rising populist rhetoric about globalization and its consequences. At the end of the day, economics doesn’t stay confined to its own world . It is all about politics in the last analysis. Low growth brings in bad politics, and bad politics is what has been eroding the stability of the global system.
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