It's around a month until the G20 summit gets underway in Hangzhou. Ahead of the summit, experts and government officials are gathering in Beijing to discuss some of the trade and investment outcomes that could be reached during the meeting.
About 30 experts and government officials from some of the G20 members are discussing trade and investment issues connected with the upcoming G20 Summit, which will be held in early September.
"The G20 summit is very important, because there are so many uncertainties in the world economy. With downturn on investment and trade, with the problem of Europe and potential departure of the UK from the EU. It's important for the G20 countries to show leadership," Jeffrey Schott, senior fellow iwht Peterson Institute for International Economics said.
Workshop participants have also evaluated achievements made at the recent G20 Trade Ministers' Meeting in Shanghai. It is seen as laying the groundwork for the Hangzhou summit.
The meeting in Shanghai issued the first trade ministers' joint statement in the history of the G20. In it, members agreed to take comprehensive measures to help developing countries and small businesses move up the global value chain. They also agreed to prolong the commitment of not implementing -- or reducing trade protection measures through to the end of 2018.
But Schott is not optimisitic about this commitment. He thinks trade ministers have just made the same committment as 10 years ago.
"In terms of preventing new protectionism, they just repeated what they've done in the past, but never fully implemented it. G20 is a diverse group, with different interest, and even different definitions of protectionism. I think this may be too much details for the leaders to discuss at a meeting when they had many important political and economic matters to talk about," Schott said.
But one Chinese expert believes it's important to achieve goals like this step by step. The forthcoming summit will facilitate the reduction of trade protectionism.
"Our goal is to implement it, but first we need to reach an agreement, and establish the rules. During the recent trade ministers' meeting, they decided to set a system of indicators to monitor those countries' actions, which is a step towards implementation. In the summit, the leaders are likely to emphasize the importance of opposing trade protectionism, and reach agreement and principles on this," Zhang Yuyan, director of Institute of World Economics and Politics, said.
Zhang believes, after the summit, some member countries and economic organizations will adjust their own trade policies and implement it. It will help achieve the goal of reducing trade protectionism.
Trade and investment form an important engine of economic growth. But the global environment has not been too positive. In the last four years, the trade growth rate was lower than the world GDP. And aggregate investment didn't exceed the highest level set prior to the 2008 financial crisis. As the chair of this year's G20, China is striving to lead the countries out of the economic downturn.
