China exercised due influence at the Group of 20 (G20) summit and emerging economies were the biggest winners of the gathering, said Takashi Sekiyama, an expert with a Tokyo-based thinktank.

"China, standing for emerging economies and developing countries, played a very import role at the G20 summit," said Sekiyama, a research fellow of The Tokyo Foundation said on Saturday in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"China garners the largest volume of foreign reserves in the world and is the largest creditor of the United States. The enormous influence China wielded at the summit amid the global financial crisis was partly reflected in the G20 leaders' statement, which attached great importance to the concerns of emerging economies and developing countries," he said.

"As the leadership of the United States, which advocated the establishment of the Bretton Woods System in the postwar era after the defeat of Germany and Japan, has greatly weakened, a quadripolar system of the United States, Japan, China and the Europe Union, serving as the core part of the G20, will be the leading force of the world economy," Sekiyama said.

"In this respect, whether or how much the plan proposed in the G20 leaders' statement could be implemented is thus dependent on concerted actions among the four parties," he added.

With their participation in the summit, emerging economies and developing countries are likely to obtain aid and assistance in various forms and, at the same time, have more chances to make their voices heard in international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said the expert.

"In this sense, emerging economies or developing countries are the most benefited at the summit," Sekiyama.

With regard to cooperation between China and Japan on financial issues, he said: "Japan and China, both highly dependent on exports to the United States and both creditors of the United States, have many common interests."

"The two nations enjoy broad prospects for cooperation in walking out of the predicament of the excessive dependency on the United States as well as in establishing a more democratic and stable financial system," Sekiyama said.

(Xinhua News Agency April 5, 2009)