As Summit Approaches, G-8 Weighs Expansion

TOKYO -- The Group of Eight, holding its summit in Japan starting Monday, has always been a club for the world's biggest economies. Now a growing chorus is saying it's time that the clubhouse doors swing open to some newcomers.

China has eclipsed more than half the club's members in economic size, and the gross domestic product of Brazil is larger than Russia's.

"When do they move from the G-8 to the G-13?" asked Lael Brainard of the Brookings Institution, a Washington public policy organization. "None of these problems can be solved without the participation of countries like China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa."

Indeed, the G-8's grip on the world economy isn't what it used to be.

The United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia accounted for 58 percent of the world economy at current prices in 2007, International Monetary Fund figures show -- down from 65 percent in 1997.

China's $3.4 trillion economy is the fourth-largest in the world, nipping at the heels of No. 3 Germany. Brazil has the 10th-largest economy, just behind Canada but ahead of Russia. After Russia awaits fast-growing India.

It's not only raw economics. The five nations mentioned by Brainard include serious military powers and the world's two most populous nations, China and India.

It wouldn't be the first time the G-8 has changed its membership.

The group held its initial summit in France in 1975 with six members: the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy and Japan. Canada came on board the following year. Russia formally joined in 1997.

In recent years, as G-8 countries have struggled to address the concerns of the rest of the world, such as poverty in Africa, the list of summit participants has ballooned, though the core nations still hold exclusive meetings. A total of 22 heads of government -- eight from the members, seven from Africa and seven from other leading economies -- will be at the summit in Japan.

Members themselves are split over whether they need to formally open the group to new entrants.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been outspokenly in favor, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also supports expansion.

"It is in our interest to put them at the negotiating table, to treat them like partners and to put them face to face with their obligations," Sarkozy told the French-Japan Club in November.

Others are not so sure. Japan, which has long basked in the honor of being the G-8's only Asian member, has repeatedly shrugged off suggestions of expansion in the weeks leading up to the summit.

Then there's the question of democracy.

John Kirton, director of the G-8 research group at the University of Toronto, has argued that the summit's founding principles included promotion of open democracy. By that criteria, China does not meet requirements for membership, he has written.