Analysis: China’s SCO Summit Could See Enhanced Regional Cooperation

TaiwanPlus News

As the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) kicks off on Sunday, National University of Singapore Professor Ja Ian Chong says the meeting could see further energy and economic cooperation among attendees like India and Russia. But, he adds, the group may not be ready for mutual security pacts just yet.

Transcript

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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