Splendidly dressed dancers moved about the stage swiftly in a colorful performance as nearly 30 world leaders looked gravely on. Gathered in Tianjin for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), these assembled dignitaries were also taking part in Beijing’s carefully choreographed pageantry. Their presence was meant to proclaim China’s glory as the center of the non-Western world.
The SCO, founded in 2001, was formerly written off as the dictators’ club. While its summits have always attracted some interest on the part of China and Russia watchers, particularly those with interest in Central Asia, they have never received as much international media attention as the recent summit in Tianjin.
The newfound attention is, in large part, a reflection of the political malaise in the West. As exemplified by the emergency meeting of European leaders in Washington just a fortnight ago, there is a deep crisis in trans-Atlantic relations. Indeed, with Europeans afraid of abandonment by the United States but unable to fathom how they could ever stand on their own against Russia, and with a U.S. president lashing out indiscriminately against friend and foe in unpredictable fits of malice and anger, there are good reasons for lamenting the West’s untimely demise.
Perhaps, then, the SCO holds the key to an alternative future? For some of those who attended Chinese President Xi Jinping’s great gala, the answer would seem to be “yes.” Even United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres—who turned up in China in an evident bid to highlight the continued relevance of his organization—spoke enthusiastically of the need “to build a multipolar world” and of the SCO as one of the “basic conditions” of getting us there.
The reality is more complex than the optics might suggest. The SCO has always been less than the sum of its parts. It formerly served a very specific function: helping China and Russia manage their differences in Central Asia. The addition of India; Pakistan; Iran; and, most recently, Belarus has diluted the SCO’s mission. Now, it provides little more than a glamorous opportunity for multilateral banquets.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s performance in Tianjin exemplifies the SCO’s predicament. He had what he politely described as a “fruitful” exchange with Xi, and Xi, for his part, emphasized that India and China are not “threats” but rather “each other’s development opportunities.”
These words, however, don’t reflect reality. They paper over China and India’s rivalry for leadership in the global south, significant economic frictions, and the basically unresolvable border conflict that erupted in bloody skirmishes as recently as 2020-21.
The SCO simply cannot do anything about these grave differences. It is not an alliance. It is not an axis. It is not a camp. It is a platform for dialogue and little else besides.
And so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the 6,000-word joint statement of the summit, ponderously called the “Tianjin Declaration,” turns out on closer examination to be a mind-numbing collection of platitudes. There is something in there about terrorism, something about artificial intelligence, something about tourism, something about education, and something about the retreating glaciers.
There is not, however, a blueprint for a post-Western world.
In place of substance was a surfeit of suggestive and striking imagery. Here was Xi in an animated discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Modi. Here was Modi and Putin sharing a limousine ride. Here were all the participants sitting around the great table reading out their prepared remarks.
Xi spoke of working to “oppose the Cold War mentality, bloc confrontation, and bullying practices”—a jab at the United States—and of the need to “uphold fairness and justice.” (He did not go into details.) Modi, in his remarks, insisted that the SCO stood not for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (perhaps too Chinese-sounding for him) but for “Security, Connectivity, and Opportunity.”
Putin, for his part, alluded to “understandings” that he had allegedly reached in Alaska with U.S. President Donald Trump. His criticism of the United States was decidedly muted on this occasion. He used the Alaska meeting to his advantage, arriving in China, strangely enough, as the leader who boasts perhaps the best relationship with Trump of the entire lot.
Xi used the SCO-plus meeting on Sept. 1 (a gathering that included also several dialogue partners and observers) to fling his new Global Governance Initiative at his guests. This initiative joins the 2022 Global Security Initiative and the 2023 Global Civilization Initiative in offering high-minded and painfully unrealistic prescriptions for a happy world that mean very little in practice, not least for a China that deals in brutal realism.
The highlight of Xi’s easily forgettable speech was his citation from the ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher Laozi: “Uphold the great principle, and the world will follow.” But like Laozi’s Dao, Xi’s great vision is fundamentally obscure. It cannot be seen, and it cannot be named. And yet the world must follow.
Some of the guests at the Tianjin gathering (including Modi) went back home. Others continued to Beijing to witness Act Awo: a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Unlike Xi’s vision for a happy world of win-win cooperation, the military parade suggests the possibility that someone might well lose, and that it won’t be China.
In place of the banalities and broader vision of the SCO meeting, Beijing offered a more provocative message endorsed by a smaller core of countries. Putin, along with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and even North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were on hand for the roaring spectacle. Europe was represented by the connoisseur of military parades, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who also attended Putin’s parade in May.
Xi, dressed in a military tunic, read out his short speech.
“The Chinese nation is a great nation that is not afraid of violence,” he said, before instructing the Chinese people to “resolutely follow the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and inherit and carry forward the great spirit of the War of Resistance [against Japan].”
Planes flew overhead. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, laser guns, and nuclear missiles—carefully labelled in English for ease of reference—rolled across the square to the sounds of a military orchestra.
No longer so much a Daoist as a Maoist, Xi has used this bristling display of Chinese military might to remind his audiences worldwide—and the United States in particular—that Beijing’s bid to global preeminence rests on a solid foundation: the shiny armor and the goose-stepping soldiers of China’s nascent war machine.
The parade appears to have made its point.
“May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration,” Trump tweeted. “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”