If the G20 process has proved anything, it is that Beijing has quickly mastered the darker arts of financial diplomacy. At the approach of each summit, China and its undervalued currency always appear to be the main bone of contention, only for Beijing to quietly sidestep any censure.
At the first summit in London last year, China’s role in stoking global imbalances was shaping to be one of the main talking points until Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan released a paper questioning the long-term role of the dollar and shifted the conversation back to the US. A week before the Toronto meeting in July, China said it was abandoning its currency peg to the dollar, wrong-footing its critics again.
And so it is with the summit in Seoul later this week. There are plenty of governments unhappy about the level of the Chinese currency, but the subject that is really grabbing the wrong sort of headlines is the Fed and its pumping another $600bn into the US economy. Once again, it is the US and not China in the line of fire.