Western media reporting on the 25th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan has predominantly been animated by the interpretation of the organization as an Anti-West Club. The reporting was laden with such phrases as “raising a powerhouse to challenge the West,” “a group aiming to balance Western global influence;” framing the SCO more as Moscow and Beijing’s challenge to the Western led international order. By contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s key note speech in Bishkek was less a call for confrontation but more about cooperation, in the pursuit of common prosperity, development and guiding reforms in global governance. If president Xi’s address did one thing effectively, it was presenting the SCO —not as a geopolitical bloc against the West but an institutional platform for constructing better global governance and an orderly multipolar world.
The address at Bishkek centered on the key points of; development, reforms in the current global governance structure, giving the global south due importance and laying the foundation for orderly multipolarity. The framing of SCO as an Anti-West Club is thus deeply rooted in the membership rather than the agenda of the organization. Otherwise, if the organization were principally designed as a framework for confrontation with Washington, we certainly would have seen a Speech dominated by anti America rhetoric. Instead, president Xi expends significant political capital explaining how international institutions should work if all nations regardless of size and economic heft are to achieve prosperity and thrive under it.
The key misconception observed here is the inherent belief that geopolitical autonomy or it’s pursuit is akin to an Anti-West stance and so is the generic view of the SCO as a China-Russia alliance against the West. At the 25th summit for instance, 10 member states were present including India, Pakistan, Belarus, Iran, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The summit also included several nations attending either as observer or dialogue partners including, Egypt, Turkey (a NATO member), Armenian and Azerbaijan among others. Based on this diversity alone, the argument of a China-Russia anti West alliance proves outright inadequate at first level analysis. Moreover, to have this many nations’ foreign policy interests align is such a hard bargain to strike highlighting the absurdity of this interpretation. This however is not to say that there isn’t a geopolitical dimension to the SCO but to view it in its entirety through this lens after Bishkek borders on lazy generalization.
The same address clarifies the concept of multipolarity which has often been presented as America losing power while China and Russia gain the same. In this speech, president Xi links current global challenges to protectionism, unilateralism but most importantly hegemony. Hence his position is less about replacing American hegemony with Chinese hegemony but rather restructuring how rules and norms are set. These changes are such that more nations get a say in the setting of rules. This is evidenced by his emphasis of sovereign equality, greater global south representation, institutional reforms but also orderly multilateralism. Therefore, other than present multipolarity as where America loses power while China grows stronger, advocating a greater role of the global south elevates the role of increasing the number of power centers and the influence they have over rule setting and institutions of international politics.
To the global south and Africa, the question on why Bishkek should matter is aptly answered by emphasizing the SCO’s relevance over the question of how to replace Washington with Beijing. The speech does this by looking beyond who makes the rules and addresses the question on how to increase the stake of developing nations in the process of setting these rules. While rules have oftentimes been made exclusive of the developing world; leaving it to bear the brunt of following them, Bishkek calls this out stressing sovereign equality and a return to the principles of the UN chatter. The positions echoed in this speech in so many ways coincide with Africa’s calls for, increased representation, policy autonomy, pursuing alternative partnerships without inviting upon themselves punitive diplomatic action and a stronger voice in global governance.
The reading of Shanghai Cooperation Organization and similar groupings of nations as ploys to destroy the west sit on a long stretch of western dominance. With a surge in middle powers on the international stage, groupings such as the SCO and BRICS have easily been seen as a challenge to the West than what they often are —vehicles of reform in the global governance architecture. Moreover, in realism, it naturally follows that the SCO’s share of nearly one-fourth of global GDP and a little over one-third of the world’s population makes for the capabilities of a formidable rival. The point however isn’t to call the SCO an apolitical organization for it operates in a world where strategic competition is commonplace. Russia and indeed China do have considerable influence in the organization, but so do the other members such as India, Pakistan, Turkey and others all of which don’t always have foreign policy interests that run in the same direction. What’s also not accurate is interpreting not being geopolitically neutral as being anti-West.
Thus President Xi’s moment at the Bishkek summit clarifies that; not every institution that expands outside the western alliance system must necessarily be interpreted through the lens of great power rivalry. Instead he demonstrates that the SCO is a party in the broader struggle for reforms in the architecture of the international order. His speech is more about who else should get representation, how should rules be made and what principles should be followed. Whereas the reforms might indeed reduce
The writer is a research fellow at the Development Watch Centre.
