President Xi Jinping will gather more than 20 world leaders at a regional security forum next week in a powerful show of Global South solidarity in the age of Donald Trump.
Aside from Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaders from Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia and South-East Asia have been invited to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, in the northern port city of Tianjin from Aug 31 to Sept 1.
The summit will feature Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to China in more than seven years as the two neighbours work on further defusing tensions roiled by deadly border clashes in 2020.
Modi last shared the same stage with Xi and Putin at last year’s BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, even as Western leaders turned their backs on the Russian leader amid the war in Ukraine.
“Xi will want to use the summit as an opportunity to showcase what a post-American-led international order begins to look like and that all White House efforts since January to counter China, Iran, Russia, and now India have not had the intended effect,” said Eric Olander, editor-in-chief of The China-Global South Project, a research agency.
This year’s summit will be the largest since the SCO was founded in 2001, a Chinese foreign ministry official said last week, calling the bloc an “important force in building a new type of international relations”.
The security-focused bloc, which began as a group of six Eurasian nations, has expanded to 10 permanent members and 16 dialogue and observer countries.
Its remit has also enlarged from security to economic and military cooperation.
Analysts say expansion is high on the agenda for many countries attending, but agree the bloc has not delivered on cooperation outcomes and that China values the optics of Global South solidarity against the United States at a time of erratic policymaking.
Analysts expect India and China to announce further border measures such as troop withdrawals, the easing of trade and visa restrictions, cooperation in new fields including climate, and broader government and people-to-people engagement.
Despite the lack of substantive policy announcements expected at the summit, experts warn that the bloc’s appeal should not be underestimated.
“This summit is about optics, really powerful optics,” added Olander. — Reuters
