Beijing‘s SCO Summit Signals a Push to Reshape global Order
The recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Beijing highlighted China’s ambition to reshape the global order, leveraging the bloc to counter Western influence and promote alternative frameworks for cooperation. Key outcomes from the summit included strengthened ties with Russia, a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) collaboration, and steps toward establishing a new progress bank.
Strengthened Ties with Russia & Signaling to Washington
The summit saw Russian president Vladimir Putin receive a warm welcome from Chinese President Xi jinping, including a photograph of the two leaders inside Putin’s armored Aurus limousine. This display of solidarity underscores Russia’s continued access to influential partners despite Western sanctions. Analysts suggest India’s participation and engagement with both Russia and China serves as a strategic signal to the United states. “India is using this to opportunistically send a signal indirectly to Washington, that it has strategic options, not only in Beijing, but also in Moscow,” explained researcher Bonnie Chan. For Russia, the SCO remains a key international platform where Putin is not primarily on the defensive.AI Partnership Roadmap
The Tianjin Declaration of the SCO Council reaffirmed commitments to strengthen artificial intelligence cooperation, emphasizing “equal rights of all countries to develop and use AI.” This followed Premier Li Qiang’s proposal at an AI conference in Shanghai to create an organization to coordinate global AI regulation. SCO members pledged to cooperate on reducing AI risks, improving security and accountability, and implementing a roadmap for joint AI cooperation and development. Beijing, in a statement following the SCO AI Cooperation Forum in May, called for a collaboration center for AI submission, and pledged to promote open-source AI models and share advanced technologies. Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA Group, noted Beijing’s focus on “open-source [large-language-models]’ as productivity infrastructure,” but cautioned that the challenge lies in “how or if to regulate the use of open source models across borders.”
A New Development Bank
Member states agreed to establish an SCO development bank, a notable step toward the bloc’s long-standing goal of creating an alternative payment system that reduces reliance on the U.S. dollar. While potentially smaller in scale than the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), launched by China in 2014, the proposed bank reflects Xi Jinping’s ambition to position himself as the “architect” of a China-led global governance framework, according to Steven Okun, chief executive officer of consultancy APAC Advisors. Beijing also pledged 2 billion yuan ($280 million) in free aid for member states this year and an additional 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in loans to the organization’s members over the next three years.
