G-8 meets amid calls to take on new members

Outsider China has eclipsed more than half the club's members in economic size and the gross domestic product in 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-based think tank. "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 U.S., 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.

As the G-8 members have moved well past their glorious high-growth periods in the decades after World War II, other nations have jumped to the fore as economies to be reckoned with.

Chief among them is China. It's $3.4 trillion economy is 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. In the global warming debate, China is vying with the United States as the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases.

"The world has changed dramatically," said Robert Hormats, vice chairman at Goldman Sachs (International), who helped Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan prepare for economic summits. "The new global power structure is not what it was."

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