More than 25 national leaders and heads of 10 international organisations are meeting in the Chinese coastal city of Tianjin to talk about security, the global economy and regional issues. Hosted by China’s Xi Jinping, participants include Vladimir Putin of Russia, Narendra Modi of India (on his first trip to China for seven years), and the leaders of Iran, Indonesia and Turkey. Together, their countries account for a quarter of the world’s GDP – and growing – and almost half of the world’s population. Standby for the group photo: if you wanted an illustration of a large part of the world’s future, here it is.
This three-day gathering is the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Set up in the 1990s to moderate regional disputes that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse, it was revamped in 2001 as a counterpart of sorts to the Western bloc of Nato, the US and the EU, although its clout has never matched that aspiration. The rising influence of the BRICS also clouded the picture, as the inclusion of Latin America made their reach greater. With the record turnout for the SCO in China this year, however, the dynamic between the two groups could be changing.
China’s choice of Tianjin is also surely not by chance. A century ago, it was a patchwork of foreign territorial concessions; now it is a major port city that has become a showcase for Chinese development. The honoured guests will doubtless take note. Something else they will note is that this meeting has a postscript. Many of them will go on to Beijing to attend China’s commemoration of 80 years since the end of the Second World War. This hardly seems a natural anniversary for big festivities in China, not least because the Nationalists were then in power.
The military parade that will be the centrepiece, however, suggests that the commemorations are intended in part as a statement to the West that it has no monopoly claim to the Allied victory in the Pacific and that China, too, was and is part of the picture. Among guests at the parade will be North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, on his first known visit to China since 2019, and his first-ever appearance at a major international gathering alongside the Chinese and Russian leaders.
Given the scale of the events and the level of attendance, both at the SCO and the Second World War anniversary, you might well ask why the West seems to have shown so relatively little interest – or alarm. One reason, of course, is simply the weight of other news, including political crises in parts of Europe, tensions in the UK over asylum hotels, the violence in and around Gaza, and Donald Trump’s stuttering efforts to end the war in Ukraine. And now his court defeat on tariffs has unleashed new turmoil, which will doubtless feature prominently in discussions at Tianjin.
For the West to neglect what is happening in China this week, however, would be a big mistake. Even if there is more symbol than substance, the multiple messages that are being sent need to be heeded. Among them are these. On Russia: Trump’s Alaska summit might have ended Putin’s isolation by the West, but the extent of that isolation was exaggerated. Putin remained persona grata in much of the world – and he will take his place as a major international leader at Tianjin. On Russia and China: Xi and Putin will appear at the Beijing military parade, but along with others. This is no exclusive alliance; it is a partnership of largely economic convenience that exists in a wider regional context.
On China and India: the SCO summit was preceded by extensive talks between India’s Modi and Xi, giving the lie, for the moment at least, to the common idea that the world does not have enough room for both of them. On Russia and India: Trump seems to have gambled on using the threat of stratospheric tariffs to stop India from buying Russian energy. Not only has India defied that intimidation, but the tariffs themselves may not survive. And on Central Asia: the survival and possible revival of the SCO challenges the longstanding Western belief that Russia and China have to be engaged in a deadly rivalry for influence in the region.
None of this means that, in Russia’s case, it would not prefer to orient its trade and diplomacy back towards the US and Europe, where it feels it belongs. Nor does it mean that there are not tensions in a group as loosely defined and geographically broad as the SCO, or that there are not forces of national interest that may pull them apart. What it does mean is that leaders representing almost half the world’s population are discussing their future without particular reference to, still less dependence on, the West. The old world may not have to be eclipsed before the contours of a new order can be glimpsed.
