China’s grand global plan on full display at SCO Summit

The 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin was by no means a game-changer, but it was a useful bellwether for close observers of China’s shifting foreign policy strategy.

Over the past decade, Beijing’s understanding and interaction with the so-called “global order” has undergone a significant transformation — from a historically deferential approach rooted in compliance with Western-led institutions, to now tentatively attempting to convene a coalition of the “aggrieved.”

For many SCO members, abstention costs more than participation. Central Asian states treat it as insurance against great power rivalry, while India stays engaged to prevent China from monopolizing regional leadership.

Belarus joined in 2024 less for benefits than to avoid isolation. Iran uses membership to counter diplomatic marginalization despite crippling sanctions. Whatever their motives, most members conclude that exclusion means forfeiting influence over conversations that will happen with or without them.

The recent summit confirmed this pattern across multiple domains. On security, the new Universal Center for Countering Security Challenges and Threats will not reconcile India and Pakistan, but it will extend the SCO’s reach.

On economics, Chinese President Xi Jinping highlighted trade with SCO members that has surpassed US$500 billion and recast selective bilateral deals as signs of multilateral progress. Even the Belt and Road Initiative, still contested by India, folds easily into SCO bilateral discussions – giving Chinese projects Eurasian branding.

On governance, Beijing advanced its Global Governance Initiative, rejecting bloc politics and “Cold War mentality” while affirming loyalty to the UN and WTO – signaling opposition to US dominance without naming it. None of these commitments is enforceable, but their repetition may subtly shape, and eventually foster, new conceptions of legitimacy.

All the world’s a stage

Unlike Washington, which has long enjoyed a near-unrivalled position as the de facto convenor of the “coalition of values,” or as some cynical voices would put it, a “coalition of the empires”, Beijing has long been reticent about positioning itself as a hub or nexus for Global South leadership.

Much of this was epitomized by the late leader Deng Xiaoping’s adage: “Hide your strength and bide your time.” Today, the winds of change are blowing wildly – and perhaps freely, too.

From BRICS+ to SCO, from BRI to the slew of “Global Initiatives” unveiled in recent years, Beijing appears intent on projecting its ability to convene not just any partner, but some of its most prominent allies, despite their intertwined rivalries, under its banner.

Indeed, both India and Pakistan are SCO members, even as tensions abound among Central and West Asian members of the group. Notably, this model of modern statecraft relies on performance, rather than substantive norms and policy commitments, as the currency of influence.

When Indian leader Narendra Modi sat alongside Pakistani leaders despite their militarized borders, when Iran attended despite crushing Western sanctions, and when Turkey balanced NATO membership with SCO partnership, these performative acts validated something more valuable than any treaty signature — China’s role as a rising convener of Eurasian politics.

In truth, the SCO operates on principles that would make Western diplomats recoil: no enforcement, minimal obligations and irresolvable contradictions. Yet this apparent weakness conceals a useful strength that escapes conventional analysis, enabling Beijing to signal nominal and symbolic victories without committing to substantive policy breakthroughs.

Precisely because the SCO is so divided, the optimal strategy for asserting authority is to avoid specific policy debates that could deepen fragmentation and instead play up the discursive and emotive commonalities among its members – notably, a shared skepticism toward the incumbent US leadership and its proclaimed vision of the world order.

This inversion of Western institutional logic explains why what looks hollow from Brussels or Washington endures in Eurasia. Western observers see failure in the lack of enforcement, but the absence of obligations is precisely what sustains the forum. By design, the SCO absorbs contradictions and hosts adversaries without requiring consensus.

Its communications are filled with amicable yet non-contentious statements that offer representatives plausible deniability – which partly explains why Pakistan found it conducive and politically possible to sign onto a declaration that implicitly criticizes the role played by radical Islamist terrorists in regional geopolitics, an olive branch of sorts to India over the recent Indo-Pakistani clashes.

The implications reach well beyond South and Central Asia. If China can convene adversaries, absorb contradictions and project authority through institutional design rather than military coercion or economic conditionality, it may well be devising a template that other multilateral institutions could replicate.

The SCO thus demonstrates a certain constructivist streak in China’s approach: through ritual, repetition and the circulation of its diplomatic language, Beijing normalizes its symbolic leadership across multilateral frameworks.

The ascending power is slowly coming to terms with the imperative and case for soft power, to be acquired via the dexterous leveraging of existing and new multilateral institutions.

Where the SCO falls short

Yet this is also where the SCO falls short. Where the G7 demands coordination and NATO insists on collective defense, the SCO is rooted in avowed ambiguities and the accommodation of inconsistencies and conflicts. Indeed, its path forward is defined by several clear challenges.

The first is the danger of mission creep. What began as a loose security dialogue now includes coordination centers, development banks and governance initiatives. Beijing rejects “bloc politics” even as it builds bloc-like structures.

Some may praise the expansion in scope as artful maneuvering, yet aligning and harmonizing the interests of its diverse member states remains far easier said than done.

Can the SCO get India and Pakistan on the same page on which projects should be externally financed? How will Central and West Asian states seek to compete with one another for governance-related funding? To what extent will Russia seek to subtly co-opt SCO coordination centers to maintain its waning influence in Central Asia? These are questions no single power can answer unilaterally.

The second concerns long-standing mistrust and skepticism. China, India and Russia appear to be drawing closer (as reflected by their leaders’ cordial interactions at Tianjin and a flurry of sherpa-led talks beforehand), yet their engagement begins from a low baseline.

Serious and deep-seated mistrust between the bureaucracies of New Delhi and Beijing remains unresolved. Russia courts both India and Pakistan, leveraging the divide as a strategic hedge. Pakistan remains central to both Beijing and Moscow but continues to sharpen, not soften, regional rivalries – particularly amid a recent thaw between its military leadership and Washington. The SCO’s optics masks more fractures than they mend.

The third revolves around whether the SCO can truly function as a multilateral mechanism rather than a Sino-Russian-led bloc. While that framing appeals to countries deeply inimical to the West, it could repel those who remain wary of alienating the US, the European Union and the Anglosphere at large.

Beijing’s diplomatic vocabulary — terms like “indivisible security,” “common development,” “civilizational dialogue” — recurs in declaration after declaration, providing ammunition to those who seek to paint the SCO as yet another China-driven and Beijing-propped initiative.

If the SCO is to succeed, it must develop at least a veneer of independence and openness to court and persuade those who are more open to engaging and working with the US, EU and its partners, and to reassure them that membership does not amount to a declaration of estrangement from the West.

The SCO’s open question will need to be answered carefully in the years ahead. Its true significance may lie not in the agreements signed, but in its extensive and blatant display of contradictions – a common stage where rivals coexist, tensions are choreographed and China experiments with a new grammar of influence that is beginning to contest systematically existing claims about legitimacy in the global order.

Could this SCO summit redefine what multilateralism means in Eurasia? The jury is still out.

Dr Brian Wong is an HKU-100 assistant professor in philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. His research examines the ethics and dynamics of authoritarian regimes and their foreign policies, historical and colonial injustices, and the intersection of geopolitics, political and moral philosophy, and technology. Sebastian Contin Trillo-Figueroa is a Hong Kong-based geopolitics strategist with a focus on Europe-Asia relations.