Nous avons s\u00e9lectionn\u00e9 quelques extraits d’articles sur le G20 de S\u00e9oul. On y trouve divers aspects de cette r\u00e9union, selon des points de vue diff\u00e9rents.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t La solitude d’Obama au sommet de G20, c’est la solitude de l’Am\u00e9rique, c’est l’Am\u00e9rique en train de perdre le statut de puissance et d’influence d\u00e9cisives qu’elle avait jusqu’alors. Le titre du Los Angeles Times<\/em> (le 13 novembre 2010<\/a>) fait \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard, froid dans le dos : \u00abU.S. left in the cold at G-20 summit<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abThe United States apparently will have to go it alone in dealing with its fragile economy and near-double digit unemployment after the Group of 20 summit ended Friday with no commitment to immediate action to reduce trade and currency tensions.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbA U.S. proposal to set numerical limits on trade surpluses and deficits was rejected. Leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies pledged only to develop indicative guidelines to assess imbalances in the first half of 2011. They also refused to endorse a U.S. effort to force China to raise the value of its currency. Any sense of global solidarity looks to have been yesterday’s story, said Tim Condon, chief economist at ING Financial Markets in Singapore.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIn their final declaration, leaders did pledge to work together and to refrain from protectionism and competitive devaluation of currencies. But the lack of speedy, specific actions on how to do so left the Obama administration along with American workers, families and businesses to shoulder the challenge and pain of trying to solve the nation’s economic problems on its own.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbObama is now in a position where he must be prepared to act unilaterally to reduce the trade deficit and to shore up U.S. industrial and technological competitiveness or risk losing not only the presidency in two years, but also the American dream, said Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration trade negotiator and now president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t Les Britanniques, qui \u00e9taient \u00e0 S\u00e9oul comme une nation bless\u00e9e et portant le poids \u00e9norme des effets de leur engagement absolu dans le syst\u00e8me en cours d’effondrement, ont \u00e9voqu\u00e9 le spectre de la Grande D\u00e9pression par la voix de Cameron. Sans doute esp\u00e8rent-ils ainsi le conjurer, mais surtout en gardant les m\u00eames recettes qui ont men\u00e9 \u00e0 la crise de 2008. (Dans The Independent<\/em> du 12 novembre 2010<\/a>.) <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abThe Prime Minister said that one of the key factors behind the 2008 financial crisis the build-up of massive trade imbalances between the high-consuming West and the productive economies of east Asia had not gone away and might even, according to the IMF, be getting worse.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbHe accepted that the G20 was not in a heroic phase of the kind seen at earlier summits in London and Pittsburgh, when fear of the economic abyss made co-operation on a huge range of issues possible. But he said it was up to the heads of major economic powers gathered in the South Korean capital to show that this world, these politicians, these leaders, have learned the lessons of the 1930s we’re going to keep the system open rather than see it progressively close.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t Le Daily Telegraph<\/em> du 12 novembre 2010<\/a> tire bien entendu le principal enseignement du sommet. La Chine a domin\u00e9 le sommet. La Chine, d\u00e9sormais, c’est l\u00e0 o\u00f9 se trouve la puissance<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abThe leaders of the G20 group of rich and developing nations met in Seoul this week for what might reasonably be described as their first post-crisis summit. But it also had the feeling of the first post-Western summit. China, the world’s second richest nation and its rising power, believes that the financial crisis was actually a North Atlantic crisis. Now that the worst of it is over, Beijing sees little reason to swallow the medicine for someone else’s sickness. The summit therefore broke up none too amicably without really addressing the trade imbalances that were one of the root causes of the crisis, or America’s worry that Beijing is gaining an unfair advantage by artificially keeping its currency weak. Instead, China flexed its muscles and got what it wanted: a watered-down statement that will not force it to change course. If President Obama hoped that the G20 would burnish his image as a world statesman after the disaster of the midterm elections, those hopes were disappointed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt is inescapable that we are witnessing a historic shift of economic power from West to East<\/em> []<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbOf course, there is no Confucian law which dictates that a meticulously controlled economy will grow for ever. China’s ferocious investment and devalued exports will only take the country so far: it must also find a way to grow internally by stimulating domestic demand. That is a tricky proposition, for there are plenty of sources of instability on the horizon. The North Atlantic crisis did not produce significant unrest but if the Chinese economy falters in the middle of the largest-scale process of urbanisation in history, then the unspoken deal which has seen its population trade freedom for growth could unravel. For China’s leaders, holding on to power means continuing to deliver prosperity to their population. The role of the West in this process must be to persuade the Chinese government, and the Chinese people, that growth will best be delivered not by assertive nationalism and chauvinist mercantilism, but by co-operation and liberalisation (in both senses of the word). If successful, this would be the greatest foreign-policy achievement since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tThe shock waves from China’s emergence as a great power are beginning to reverberate. The abiding question is what kind of power it will be.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n