The group of seven acts as an elite with the claim to lead the world politically and economically. But do the Western industrialized countries still have the economic clout to live up to this claim? A look at some economic figures gives some clues.
Who are these G7 countries that they debate and decide on global political issues in an exclusive group? Leaving aside the political question of whether they have or ever had a moral mandate or a mandate under international law: is the group of the seven major western industrialized countries still an economic heavyweight that can actually assert its ideas worldwide? The decline of Western economic supremacy and the end of dollar dominance of the global financial system have been predicted for many years. Especially in the conflict with Russia and in an increasingly cooling relationship with China, the question arises as to whether, for example, sanctions by the G7 are as effective a weapon as the heads of state and government of these countries would like us to believe.
The G7 cannot rely on the size of the population for their claim to leadership. With around 770 million inhabitants, the G7 represent less than a tenth of the world's population. Almost twice as many people live in China and India. Together, the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - which recently met at their own summit as a counter-group to the leading Western powers of the G7, make up a good 40 percent of all humanity.
In terms of economic size, however, the situation is quite different. Although China has achieved impressive growth in recent decades, the USA is still well behind in terms of economic output measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). The difference in weight is even greater when comparing the G7 and BRICS groups of states. The GDP of the seven Western industrialized countries is more than 50 percent larger than that of the up-and-coming emerging countries. Together, the G7 generate just a little less than half of the total global economic output of a good 93 trillion US dollars.
Economists had long expected that China would rise to become the world's largest economic power in the 2020s and that the other large emerging countries such as India and Brazil would also catch up with the much smaller industrialized countries Japan and Germany in terms of population. However, it doesn't look like that anymore at the moment. China's pace of growth has not only slowed down significantly since the corona pandemic. Brazil's economy collapsed after the boom in the first decade of this century. India was also unable to meet the high growth expectations.
However, China has developed into a global economic power, particularly through its exports of goods. With a share of almost 15 percent, it has pushed the USA and Germany into second and third place as the "world export champion". Together with the Hong Kong SAR, China exports more goods than the USA and Germany combined. As trading powers, the G7 weigh slightly more than the BRICS countries. However, there can be no talk of dominance in this area.
There is one area, however, where the West continues to dominate the world utterly: the financial and monetary system. Although China is now an undeniable economic and, above all, trading power, the Chinese currency Renminbi (Yuan) only plays a subordinate role globally. The US dollar is still the currency in which most internationally traded goods are priced and paid for.
This is not just a legacy of past decades, when the economic dominance of the US and its allies was even greater. The international role of the dollar, and to a lesser extent the euro, yen and pound sterling, is also based on the openness of their respective financial systems. China's leadership is restricting international capital flows and trading in the yuan. This makes it uninteresting as a reserve currency for central banks, for example.
For decades, the Western economic powers have also accumulated gigantic assets abroad, i.e. claims on other economies. It is true that China has also built up considerable foreign assets through foreign investments and above all through its high export surpluses. China and the BRICS do not come close to the more than 32 trillion dollars gross claims of the USA on other economies and over 90 trillion of the G7 as a whole.
