Some people see it as a prelude to the swan song of G8 when world leaders have recently agreed in Pittsburgh to make the G20 the main international forum for crafting international economic policy.

The decision gives major developing countries such as China, India and Brazil more say in steering the global economy, a role long played by the old club of eight wealthy nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, Germany and Russia.

The transition from G8 to G20 represents a major change in the global financial architecture, however, coexistence, cooperation and competition are the rules to play between the two for far ahead, Canadian experts said.

John Kirton, Director of G20 and G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the G20 summit will coexist with the G8 one, for both have much to offer and thus are here to stay.

The G20 will cooperate with the G8 for each is "a club with its own dynamic, distinctive agenda," he said.

Furthermore, the G20 and G8 summits will compete to generate effective global governance on the basis of the very different purposes at their respective cores, he said.

For the G20, he said, its focus will be financial stability, fiscal and monetary stimulus, financial regulation and supervision, and trade and investment liberalization -- all issues that the G8 abandoned any serious effort on years ago.

The G8 has instead been working on African development, climate change, health, energy and education, as well as critical political security issues such as nuclear non-proliferation or encouraging the establishment of stable democracies, he said.

Greg Albo, a political science professor of York University, noted that G20 works at the sense of providing some common framework for dealing with certain global issues, but it might notable to do a very good job to move the general framework to actual policies.

It is more challenging for (G20) countries to think beyond their national and domestic interests, says Gregory Chin, a senior fellow of the Center for International Governance Innovation.

As a former diplomat working in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, China noted that the global weight of China and India is much more important than the average developing countries. The world community needs to work with China to contribute in a positive way to maintain stability for everyone.

(Xinhua News Agency October 7, 2009)