ABSTRACT
As China prepared to host the 11th Group of 20 (G20) summit in Hangzhou on September 4-5, 2016, and worked in the G20’s governing troika to this end, anticipation grew about how China would design and deliver this critical global governance event. The interest was understandable. This was the fi rst time that China, the world’s second most powerful economy, would host the G20 summit, after 10 summits and seven years had passed. It was the second time that the G20 summit would be hosted by a member of the BRICS, with China leading India, Brazil and South Africa in this regard, and following only Russia, which had hosted the St. Petersburg Summit in 2013 when Russia was a member of the still operating Group of Eight (G8). It was the fi rst time that the G20 summit would be hosted by two emerging country members in a row, as Turkey had hosted in November 2015. It was the fi rst time that the G20 would be hosted by a country that was not a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The decision to choose China as host in 2016 over neighbouring Japan suggested that China was now the leading power in rapidly rising Asia. Hosting would allow President Xi Jinping to show his vision for China’s leadership in global governance as a whole. With Barack Obama coming as a lame-duck U.S. president in the lead-up to presidential and congressional elections in early November, Xi would now have to fi nd another co-leader or lead the G20 summit alone.
