00:00The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is set to kick off this Sunday. What can we realistically
00:05expect from the meeting? So I think there will be a lot of announcements to the effect that
00:11you know they are for stability, they are for world peace, but I suppose beyond that because
00:18this also dovetails with the PRC's big celebration of the victory over Japan in the Second World War.
00:26So apart from the sort of optics and I guess the outreach elements, what we'll really have to see is
00:34what kind of follow-up that looks like. I think realistically what we would probably be looking
00:38at is some cooperation on the economic front, maybe on the infrastructure, definitely on the energy.
00:46India is going to be buying oil from Russia, the PRC is already buying oil from Russia,
00:51Russia needs to sell that oil to fuel its oil machine in Ukraine.
00:56And with that, India's Russian oil imports will reportedly be increased in September
01:00per Reuters. So do you think that there could be additional deals between Russia and China
01:05or Russia and India at this meeting?
01:06So I think probably there will be some discussion about how they together will withstand instability
01:16wrought on by the tariffs that the Trump administration has put on. I guess what will be
01:22interesting to watch is to see whether they directly name the Trump administration or not. I guess what
01:28that will signal is the degree to which they are willing to be directly confrontational. The real thing to
01:33watch is that there will be a lot of grandiose statements that will be pushed out quite a bit
01:38by a lot of these PRC media outlets and also I guess social media that's supportive of the PRC.
01:46And there will be quite a lot of hay made out of it, but it's about cutting through all of that
01:51to see what really goes on and that might take time.
01:53One critique of the SEO and BRICS has both been that members largely deliver statements for one another
02:00without actually delivering real tangible results. Do you think that could change after this Sunday?
02:06So the statements provide a coordinating function. So a lot of the BRICS and the SEO stuff have been
02:14statements, but where there's been follow up is where, for instance, the PRC has been investing in rail in
02:21Central Asia. They've been doing a lot more trade and investment in Central Asia to get things like rare earths,
02:28to get things like energy. So those, I suppose, come on the heels of the SEO and BRICS stuff basically
02:36because they sort of leaders have set the tone and everyone else can then sort of look at, you know,
02:43where they can follow up. So it has that function, but sort of high-end stuff that we've heard about some sort of
02:49mutual security. I don't think any of the SEO members are ready for it. Just like with BRICS,
02:54I don't think anybody's quite ready to move towards complete de-dollarization at this point.
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