Your humble blogger will be hitting the road early in the morrow to Shanghai. I'll be attending a conference co-sponsored by the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, Stanley Foundation and the Munk School of Global Affairs University of Toronto on "Global and Collaborative Asian & Pacific Leadership for the G20."

Note to citizens of the PRC:  I too will be toting my own luggage.

I'll certainly try to avoid catching Friedman's Disease during this China trip.*  I'll also try to avoid a related management consulting syndrome, which is the belief that a few days in another country somehow endows me with "street cred" when discussing said country. This seems particularly prevalent with respect to China.

Since the topic is the state of the G-20, and I've made my feelings about that forum pretty plain on this blog, I hereby challenge readers to persuade my mind in the 48 hours before I present. The G-20 performed best when the sense of crisis seemed most acute. As the eurozone melts down, and the United States doesn't look much better, is the G-20 capable of jumpstarting a bout of policy coordination that looks more robust than, say, this totally anemic statement?

What do you think?

*If Gwyneth Paltrow is coughing anywhere near me, on the other hand, I'm... I'm.... probably going to be the Index Patient Plus One.