(CNSNews.com) - As President Bush joins other world leaders for the last Group of Eight summit of his presidency, the agenda will again focus attention on China's international role and its glaring absence from the group of leading industrialized countries.

With climate change topping the list of subjects to be discussed by the eight leaders meeting at a lakeside resort on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido Monday, the absence of China -- the global leader in carbon emissions -- appears anomalous.

China has also become a key, if controversial, player in Africa, and its fast-expanding economy is a factor in the global food and fuel price crises. African development and spiraling food and oil costs are all on the agenda for the G8 leaders.

Chinese President Hu Jintao will, in fact, participate in dialogue with the G8 in Toyako as part on an "outreach group" of emerging economies that was set up at last year's G8 summit, in Germany, and also involves Brazil, India and South Africa.

But the pressure for China -- the world's fourth-largest economy in dollar terms -- to be invited to join the group is growing. The current G8 members are the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia.

In a speech in Paris on Saturday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that it was "not reasonable" to continue meeting as eight leading economies without inviting China and India.

He took the idea further in an interview with Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun daily, published Monday, in which he said not only China and India but also Brazil, Mexico and South Africa should join, as the "G8 needs to adapt to the 21st century."

The European members of the G8 have expressed a willingness to consider expansion, while the U.S. is against the idea.

"We are not for enlargement," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe told the Kyodo news agency Monday.

Also opposed to enlargement is Japan -- which as a country excluded from the U.N. Security Council thanks largely to China's opposition -- covets its membership of the exclusive club.

G8 observers Gregory Chin and Andrew Cooper of the Center for International Governance Innovation in Ontario, Canada, say that those who support bringing in countries like China see as a benefit the "reinvigoration of the legitimacy and efficiency of the G8."

Those resisting it point to the G8's origins "as a bulwark for the protection of market-based democratic societies in the Cold War context."

Established in France in 1975 as a forum for the world's leading industrialized democracies, the group invited Russia to attend in the 1990s and formally offered it membership in 2002.

Critics say Russia is neither politically nor economically fully free -- requirements laid out in the 1975 founding declaration -- and would argue the same in China's case. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain has called for the G8 to expel Moscow.

One of the factors that could work against Beijing wishing to join the G8, China analysts say, is a reluctance to risk its standing as developing world leader and patron.

In addition to its role as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China relishes its leadership in forums such as the U.N. General Assembly and the so-called G77 bloc, a loose coalition that now includes 132 developing states.

Joining the G8 could limit its clout in such groupings and even see it shunned by former developing world allies.

Leading developing countries, such as Mexico and South Korea, left the G77 when they joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the 1990s. Cyprus and Malta dropped out of the G77 when they joined the European Union in 2004.

Because of this, China may choose to wait until the opportunity arises to join an expanded G8 as one of several new members, along with countries like India and Brazil.

'Affront'

China also looms large over the summit in Japan for another reason: The Beijing Olympic Games open in one month's time, and there are continuing calls for leaders to boycott the opening ceremony over China's crackdown in Tibet and other human rights concerns.

Of the G8 leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown say they will not attend the Aug. 8 event, and Sarkozy is expected to announce his decision this week.

The White House late last week finally confirmed that Bush would take part in the ceremony, a decision the president defended in the Hokkaido town on Toyako on Sunday.

"I happen to believe not going to the opening ceremony to the games would be an affront to the Chinese people, which may make it more difficult to be able to speak frankly with the Chinese leadership," he said.

Bush was speaking at a joint appearance with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who spoke against politicizing the Olympics and took the opportunity to confirm for the first time that he planned to attend the opening ceremony, too.

Monday's talks in Toyako will focus on Africa and involve leaders of seven African nations invited to discuss earlier G8 aid pledges, critical health needs and democratic and economic reforms. The political crisis in Zimbabwe is expected to be featured as well.

On Tuesday, climate change will dominate the discussions, with the U.S. likely to come under renewed pressure to set goals for reducing carbon emissions. The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol framework and its emission-reduction obligations, in part because it excluded China and India from binding targets. As "developing" nations, the two Asian giants were exempted despite being major carbon emitters.

Climate change will again be highlighted on Wednesday, the final day of the summit, when leaders of China, India and Brazil join the G8 leaders for talks.

Of the current G8 leaders, President Bush is the most experienced participant, attending his eighth consecutive leaders' gathering. Newcomers are Fukuda, Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

On the sidelines of the three-day event, numerous bilateral meetings will also take place including, on Monday, Bush's first meeting with Medvedev since the Russian president succeeded Vladimir Putin.

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