G20: A breakthrough or a damp squib? Discuss.

The US, the UK and others hope they got something at this G20 that will be the start of something essential to growth and good relations: the start of a journey by China to play more by the rules of the market when it comes to currency operations, to spend more when it’s in healthy surplus.

But China didn’t accept the criticisms and was aided in its own arguments because there was no centrally-agreed definition of excessive surpluses. So, the G20 agreed to get a kite-marked, collectively agreed product of analysis.

Here’s the wording they argue that they screwed out of a reluctant Chinese President. It’s all to do with when do trade  imbalances become a problem. The G20 has agreed: “Indicative guidelines … to facilitate timely identification of large imbalances that require preventive and corrective actions to be taken.” Impressed?

The government thinks you should be. They argue that it is an important start and point out that things in the G20 have in recent (crisis) times moved faster than the old days. There was relatively fast movement on bank reforms and on reform of the IMF. So, the argument goes, once the finance ministers, G20 central banks and IMF have agreed how they will measure “excessive balances,” you are on the way to agreement on how you control them.

But China has the brakes on on this one. It was happier with IMF reform and banking reform. It believes the US massively underestimates the problems of being in a completely different phase of economic development. Will it really speed up or stay glacial?

At the press conference David Cameron made much of Britain’s big role in the world, something he intends to talk about in his Lord Mayor’s Banquet speech on Monday.

You could argue there were signs on this trip that Britain’s role has shrunk. The PM didn’t pick up as much trade in China as President Sarkozy did the other week. We weren’t running the G20 this week, like we were when Gordon Brown hosted the summit in London. But we felt a bit peripheral in Seoul. The main host broadcaster didn’t send a camera to Mr Cameron’s press conference. He comes home to a country of defence cuts. He insisted when I asked him about that that it wasn’t true and Britain’s influience was adapting not shrinking.

Anyway, it must be hard for David Cameron to see himself as without influence when, as I observed a few minutes ago, nine Korean armed police escort him when he nips into a hotel for a pee on the way to the airport.