Biden Seeks to Woo Global South Away From China at G-20

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S. President Joe Biden’s ambitious goals for the G-20 summit in India, Mexico’s decision to decriminalize abortion nationwide, and the release of former Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba.

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to touch down in India on Friday in anticipation of the much-heralded G-20 summit—and he’s already making waves. Capitalizing on the looming absences of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden was quick to assert U.S. dominance over the economic bloc and remind developing countries that Washington is their best ally for advancement. This will be Xi’s first time missing the summit since coming to power in 2013, and it is the second consecutive year that Putin is skipping out.

Upon arriving in New Delhi, Biden touted his G-20 proposals for countering Chinese influence and promoting the global south. He announced plans to strengthen the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to better assist developing nations in repaying their debts. Biden has repeatedly turned to the two Western-led institutions as alternatives to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“Given both the scale of the need and, frankly, the scale of [China’s] coercive and unsustainable lending through the Belt and Road Initiative, we need to ensure that there are high-standard, high-leverage solutions to the challenges countries are facing,” said U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Biden’s focus on lending practices comes after the White House asked the U.S. Congress for $2 billion to fund World Bank and IMF projects. It also furthers Washington’s pledge to raise $600 billion by 2027 for the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, a U.S.-led alternative to the Belt and Road.

Beijing has increasingly championed Chinese-led economic initiatives as more promising alternatives for the global south than traditional Western-dominated economic groupings, such as the G-7 and G-20. At last month’s BRICS summit, for instance, founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa invited six new countries to join the economic bloc, which many experts saw as a big win for China. However, the G-20 and BRICS are still largely incomparable. Whereas the G-20 makes up 85 percent of global GDP, the original BRICS members plus the newly invited six nations still only represent as much as 36 percent.

Biden hopes that Xi’s absence at the G-20, which runs from Sept. 9-10, will demonstrate that Beijing is in no position to help developing countries—especially as it fails to alleviate its own deflation and property crisis. China’s yuan slid to a 16-year low on Thursday as the U.S. dollar gained strength.

Following the G-20, Biden is set to visit Vietnam for two days to strengthen bilateral ties with the growing economic power. Despite Hanoi and Washington only normalizing relations in 1995, the two nations have developed a robust trade relationship to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. The United States is Vietnam’s largest export market.

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Mexico’s green wave. In a major win for access to reproductive care, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion on Thursday. It is now illegal across all of Mexico’s 32 states to criminally penalize terminating a pregnancy. Mexico City became the first state to decriminalize abortions in 2007, but it was the state court of Coahuila’s ruling in 2021, which said that an existing law punishing those who seek abortions was unconstitutional, that kick-started a federal decision.

In the past three decades, at least 59 countries, including Mexico, have expanded abortion access. In Latin America, the feminist movement’s rise, growing birthrates among girls under age 15, and calls to make reproductive access a human right have all pushed the region toward expanding abortion protections. The United States, meanwhile, has gone the other direction since its 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to an abortion.

Bongo released. Gabon’s ruling junta announced the release of ousted President Ali Bongo Ondimba on Thursday after holding him and his family captive at the presidential palace since the Aug. 30 coup that embroiled the Central African nation. Bongo is now free to travel abroad for medical appointments. The announcement follows pressure from neighboring countries and the Economic Community of Central African States to free the former leader.

Bongo held power for 14 years before a military junta deposed him from office. Before Bongo, his father ruled for 41 years. The family’s removal from power has been widely celebrated by many Gabonese, who argue that the Bongos enriched themselves with income earned through Gabon’s oil industry while much of the population struggled with high levels of poverty.

Corruption sentencing. Former Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday for money laundering and fraud. While in office, Pérez Molina received millions of dollars in bribes for granting more than 70 contracts to numerous corporations. Pérez Molina was forced from office in 2015 by anti-corruption protests and has been imprisoned ever since.

Last year, Pérez Molina and his vice president were found guilty of taking bribes from Guatemala’s customs authorities in an investigation conducted by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala. However, that U.N.-backed body has since been kicked out of the country by Pérez Molina’s successor, Jimmy Morales, after it began investigating Morales.

Tinubu’s election win stands. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday after a Nigerian appeals court rejected a petition that challenged Tinubu’s qualifications to run for reelection. According to the court, there was also not sufficient evidence to prove that voting irregularities marred February’s election. The petitioners have the right to appeal the decision to the country’s Supreme Court within 60 days. The decision likely did not come as a surprise to the opposition, though; despite repeated challenges to election results in the country since 1999, no presidential election has been overturned.

One marathon competitor took his passion for running to a whole new level. On Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard arrested Iranian athlete Reza Baluchi for trying to “run to London” via a homemade hamster wheel-esque vessel—Atlantic Ocean, be damned. The 44-year-old refused to leave the contraption for three days. There’s a lot to unpack here.

Correction, Sept. 8, 2023: A previous version misstated the date that U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in India.