Editor's note: Sudheendra Kulkarni, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a long-time advocate of friendship and cooperation between India and China. He served as an aide to India's former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

There is an old saying ─ "Nau sau chuuhe khaa ke billii Haj ko chali" ─ that is popular in both India and Pakistan because it is in Hindi and Urdu, which are sister languages. The literal meaning of this idiom is: "A cat eats up 900 mice and then goes on the Hajj pilgrimage," which refers to someone who has committed  crimes all his life and then tries to atone for the sins by pretending to do a noble deed.

This saying captures the essence of what the United States is reportedly planning to do at the G20 summit in New Delhi, which began on September 9. A superpower that has fattened itself for decades through neo-colonial exploitation of poor nations around the world, and has perennially misused the power of its dollar as the global currency, is now feigning concern for the needs of those very nations.

According to a news report quoting the U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, U.S. President Joe Biden will urge reforms to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that will better serve the needs of developing countries. He "will really focus a lot of his energy while he is there on the modernization of the multilateral development banks, including WB and IMF," Sullivan said. "We have heard loud and clear that countries want us to step up our support in the face of the overlapping challenges they face," The U.S., he added, "will push proposals in New Delhi that will increase World Bank and IMF lending power by some $200 billion."

Although this statement is meant to show the U.S. in a positive light at the G20 summit, it is deceptive for more than one reason. First, the World Bank and IMF are not owned by the United States. They have a large number of national shareholders, the U.S. being one of them, albeit larger than others. Therefore, the decision of the two global financial institutions to increase their lending to developing countries, when it comes about, will reflect the collective view of their shareholders.

Second, the view that the two Bretton Woods institutions should substantially expand their lending to developing countries has been voiced repeatedly for a long time ─ and not by the U.S. government but by the Global South nations. This view is part of their longstanding demand for comprehensive organizational and functional reform of the World Bank and IMF. In fact, the U.S. has been resisting these reforms out of fear of losing its undemocratic control over these institutions.

Third, reform of multilateral development banks (MDB) ─ and the global financial architecture in general ─ has been on the agenda of the United Nations and several multilateral fora, including G20. And G20 is by no means a U.S.-led body.

G20 at its summit in Rome in 2021 had set up an independent panel of experts to review MDBs' Capital Adequacy Framework (CAF). This panel published its report in 2022 under the Indonesian presidency of G20. Based on this report, a roadmap for its implementation was prepared in July 2023, and the same will be discussed ─ and hopefully adopted ─ at the summit in New Delhi.

One of the panel's key recommendations was that initial CAF measures, such as MDBs relaxing their strict aversion to risk and easing capital requirements without losing their AAA credit ratings, "could yield an additional lending headroom of approximately $200 billion over the next decade." This clearly shows that the likely increased lending of $200 billion by the World Bank, IMF and other MDBs is not a unilateral act of generosity by the U.S. If anything, the U.S. is submitting to unavoidable pressure from countries of the Global South.

At the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, held in June this year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres held a mirror to the unfair and archaic nature of the U.S.-led global financial architecture. Calling it "outdated, dysfunctional, and unjust," he said "It is no longer capable of meeting the needs of the 21st century world."

"Even worse," Guterres remarked, "the global financial system perpetuates and even exacerbates inequalities." He gave the example of how, in 2021, the IMF allocated over $650 billion in special drawing rights. "European Union countries received $160 billion. African countries: $34 billion. In other words, European citizens received on average nearly 10 times more than African citizens. This was all done by the rules. But, let us acknowledge: these rules have become profoundly immoral. A financial architecture which does not represent today's world is at risk of leading to its own fragmentation in a world where geopolitics is in itself a factor for fragmentation."

An example of how the U.S. is trying to fragment the world through its geopolitical designs was provided by Sullivan himself. To cover up American deceitfulness, he said that the higher level of financing from the World Bank and IMF would offer developing countries a "better alternative" to China's "coercive and unsustainable lending" through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The comparison is disingenuous. An unprejudiced evaluation of the projects under the BRI shows significant benefits to partners ─ be it Laos and Indonesia in Southeast Asia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, or Kenya and Nigeria in Africa, to name only a few countries.

The case of the high-speed China-Laos Railway, constructed under the BRI, is especially telling for it exposes not just the hollowness of Sullivan's comparison, but also the past war crimes of the U.S. About 50 years after the end of the U.S.-instigated Vietnam War (which claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 soldiers as well as nearly 400,000 civilians), cluster bombs that the U.S. military dropped in Laos were still being found during the construction of the railway.

Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. rained down more than two million tons of bombs and 270 million cluster munitions, making Laos one of the most heavily bombed countries in world history. And these bombs still threaten lives. They have killed over 1,000 people so far.

True, the cat that ate up 900 mice will preach religion at the G20 summit in New Delhi.

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