China Exposes Four US Ploys in G20 Statement

Washington played underhand tricks at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting. It tried to push the meeting into issuing a communiqué targeting China. It came away empty-handed.

But Washington did not let the matter rest. On September 1, acting in its capacity as rotating chair, it unilaterally released a chair's statement. The document is widely seen as dripping with insinuations aimed at Beijing. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson hit back strongly on September 2, expressing regret that the meeting had failed to issue a communiqué.

Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account under CCTV, followed up with an analysis. It noted that the US statement made a point of spelling out: "The statement was agreed by all G20 members present except China, which objected to paragraphs 4, 10, 11, and 13." That line was seized upon to hype the narrative that "China refused to cooperate."

For a country to single out another member by name at an international multilateral meeting on its own home turf is a highly unusual move. A host is supposed to bridge differences and safeguard an atmosphere of cooperation. Instead, Washington aired the divisions in public, which amounts to announcing to the world that the very meeting it hosted had failed.

Sources close to the negotiations believe Washington's maneuver undermines the bigger picture of this year's multilateral agenda. Both the G20 and APEC are important platforms for global economic governance, and this year happens to be the year in which China and the United States each serve as host of one of the two organizations. By staging petty tricks at the G20 venue, Washington damages the credibility of the G20 and poisons the atmosphere for China-US cooperation.

Wash Hands, Shift Blame

Yuyuan Tantian points out that the US statement conceals four sinister ploys.

Ploy one: washing its hands of all responsibility. Paragraph 4 of the US statement says the global economy has remained resilient in the face of multiple shocks, including wars and conflicts. It stresses that value chains for energy, food, fertilizer and critical minerals must keep running smoothly.

In Yuyuan Tantian's reading, the subtext is a demand that all countries jointly manage these problems. Yet the statement studiously avoids mentioning exactly who launched the wars that threw energy markets into turmoil, or who erected chip export restrictions.

What concerns Beijing is whether Washington's description of the global economic situation is objective and comprehensive. One of the world economy's most prominent challenges today is precisely the damage that tariffs and restrictive measures do to the multilateral trading system.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects global inflation to climb from 4.1% last year to 4.7% in 2026, with geopolitical conflict one of the drivers. As Yuyuan Tantian sees it, Washington puts issues such as energy and fertilizer on the table yet never mentions the shocks inflicted by its own policies, much like "an arsonist standing at the scene of the blaze, selling firefighting supplies."

On top of that, reform of the global financial architecture, free trade, the role of the World Trade Organization and the elimination of protectionism were all left out of the statement.

Ploy two: shoving the blame onto China. Paragraph 10 of the US statement says countries should eliminate "non-market policies and practices" that exacerbate economic imbalances. In particular, countries with persistent and excessive external surpluses should remove the distortions that constrain domestic demand and breed an overreliance on exports.

Enlist, Then Demand Payment

Yuyuan Tantian argues that although this passage never names China, it is in fact aimed at the "overcapacity" narrative recently hyped up against the country.

The G20 set up a study group on global imbalances this year. Discussions among the parties concluded that the causes of economic imbalances are complex, spanning the international division of labor, demographics, finance, the dominance of the US dollar and capital accounts. Yet Washington skipped over these professional discussions. It kept only the "non-market" attribution, a label on which no consensus has been reached, in an attempt to pin the responsibility on China.

Ploy three: ordering international organizations into action. Paragraph 11 of the US statement asks the IMF and the OECD to refine their imbalance analysis data. In particular, it urges them to strengthen data coverage of "non-market policies and practices." Yuyuan Tantian points out that the G20 has never produced a clear definition of "non-market policies and practices." Yet Washington is asking international organizations to supply data for a label that commands no consensus. In substance, this piles up evidence for its narrative targeting China.

Ploy four: telling China to write down debts. Paragraph 13 of the US statement says relevant stakeholders, including official creditors, should be encouraged to make appropriate contributions toward the debts of developing countries. Yuyuan Tantian argues that Washington is in effect demanding that official bilateral creditors, China among them, shoulder more of the burden and provide debt relief to developing countries.

Yet official bilateral creditors account for only about 15% of developing countries' debt. The private sector and multilateral institutions are the principal creditors.

Washington deliberately demands "appropriate contributions" from official bilateral creditors. At the same time, it says nothing about America's own dwindling development aid, nor does it ask the US-led financial institutions to cut debt. This shows that its goal is not genuinely to resolve the debt problem. The goal is to concentrate the pressure on China.

China Will Fight to the End

After reading Yuyuan Tantian's analysis, the whole affair can be summed up like this:

First, the United States tabled a proposed G20 joint communiqué on trade imbalances targeting China. It knew full well that China would object and that the proposal stood no chance of passing. But the real aim was to blow the issue up in public and keep hammering away at China's so-called trade imbalances. Washington even enlisted international organizations to make moves on its behalf, demanding that China fix problems of America's own making.

Second, China brought in Yuyuan Tantian to blow the lid off the scheme. The signal: it will fight the United States to the very end.

Lo Wing-hung

Bastille Commentary

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

American politicians have a jaw-dropping talent for deflecting attention.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has cooked up yet another talking point.

On the eve of the Group of 20 (G20) finance ministers and central bank governors' meeting, Bessent said in an interview that America's direct trade position with China is "rapidly improving." But he added that China's current export surge is unsustainable.

"The world cannot have a China with a $1.2 trillion trade surplus," Bessent told Reuters. "In China, the economy is quite weak, and they are trying to export their way out of it, and they need to rebalance their economy."

Radio France Internationale reports that Bessent is pushing the G20 to adopt a coordinated trade response against China, hoping the bloc will issue a joint statement on reducing trade and current account imbalances. That will not come easily, because many countries simply do not share Washington's view. If anything, the G20 should skip that statement and issue one on the reckless abuse of tariffs instead. The United States has slapped tariffs on the whole world, even hitting a country like Australia with a 10% tariff despite running a trade surplus with it. Any country that still takes orders from Washington at this point is a fool.

Bessent's broadside against China is clearly an attempt to deflect attention from his own failures. His first recent flop was the futile intervention in the yen. To stop Japan from continuously selling US Treasuries to prop up the yen, Washington sought a one-off joint US-Japan intervention to stop the bleeding. On July 31, the United States and Japan jointly bought yen for the first time since 1998. The yen strengthened briefly, climbing to around 155 per dollar, but then came under sustained pressure. By August 28, the yen had fallen back through the 160 mark, and Bloomberg bluntly declared the US intervention ineffective.

Bessent's second flop was his failed attempt to rein in US Treasury yields. He doubled the size of each Treasury buyback operation, from US$2 billion to US$4 billion. The goal was to send the market a message: if Treasury yields climb too high, the US government stands ready to step in again. The hope was to intimidate the market into pushing down America's borrowing costs. But foreign media noted that the effect lasted only about 48 hours before Treasury yields climbed right back up.

Left with no other moves, Bessent has repackaged America's debt problem as a consequence of China's trade surplus.

Exports have always been part of any economy. Washington's claim that China is relying on exports to escape its difficulties is just talk for talk's sake. By the same logic, one could say the US economy is extremely weak and is leaning on finance and technology to dig itself out of trouble. Does that sound any more convincing to you?

The real reason America is complaining is that it faces an enormous predicament: its US$40 trillion debt pile is what is truly unsustainable. That mountain of debt stems mainly from runaway fiscal deficits and surging interest payments that the government can no longer bear. After its interventions came to nothing, Washington once again used China as a face-saving way out, claiming that every problem originates from Beijing.

US national debt grows by US$2.2 trillion a year. In fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025), total federal debt rose from about US$35.4 trillion to US$37.6 trillion. Of that increase, US$1.9 trillion went to plug the fiscal deficit, while the rest was "borrowing new to repay old," rolling over maturing debt.

Bessent calls China's US$1.2 trillion trade surplus outrageous. What really is outrageous is America issuing US$2.2 trillion of debt a year. It amounts to sucking up capital from around the globe to bankroll American consumption and prop up its stock market.

America's real problem is that it habitually paints its own problems as other people's problems. To borrow a Chinese saying: they know exactly what they are doing and are just playing dumb.

Lo Wing-hung