The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will bring together more than 20 world leaders in a regional security forum in China next week in a powerful sample of solidarity of the Global South in the era of Donald Trump, while helping Russia affected by the sanctions to achieve another diplomatic blow.
In addition to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, leaders of Central Asia, the Middle East, Southern Asia and Southeast Asia, they have been invited to the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which will take place in the Port City of Northern Tianjin from August 31 to September 1.
The summit will feature the first visit of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to China in more than seven years, since the two neighbors work to further disable tensions traveled by mortal border clashes in 2020.
The last time Modi shared the same stage with XI and Putin at the BRICS Summit last year in Kazan, Russia, even when Western leaders turned their backs on the Russian leader in the middle of the war in Ukraine.
Russian embassy officials in New Delhi last week said Moscow expects trilateral conversations with China and India to take place soon.
“XI will want to use the summit as an opportunity to show how an international order directed by post-American begins and that all efforts of the White House since January to counteract China, Iran, Russia and now India has not had the planned effect,” said Eric Olander, editor in chief of the Chinese-Global Sur project, a research agency.
“Look how much Brics has shaken [US President] Donald Trump, which is precisely what these groups are designed to do. “
This year’s summit will be the largest since the SCO was founded in 2001, said an official of the Chinese Foreign Ministry last week, qualifying the block as an “important force in the construction of a new type of international relations.”
The security -centered block, which began as a group of six Euroasy nations, has expanded to 10 permanent members and 16 dialogue countries and observers in recent years. His mandate has also expanded security and anti -terrorism to economic and military cooperation.
‘Diffuse’ implementation
Analysts say that the expansion is a great agenda for many countries that attend, but they agree that the block has not delivered substantial cooperation results over the years and that China values the optics of solidarity of the South Global South against the United States at a time of formulation of erratic policies and geopolitical flow.
“What is the precise vision that the SCO represents, and its practical implementation is quite confusing? It is a platform that has a growing convocation power, which helps in the narrative projection,” said Manoj Kewalramani, president of the Indo-Pacific Research Program in the thinking of the Takshaila institution in Bangalore.
“But the effectiveness of the SCO to address substantial security problems is still very limited.”
The frictions remain among the central members India and Pakistan.
The meeting of the June Defense Ministers could not adopt a joint statement after India raised objections, saying that he omitted the reference to the deadly attack of April 22 to Hindu tourists in Kashmira occupied by India, which led to the worst fighting in decades between India and Pakistan.
Nueva Delhi also refused to join the conviction of the OCS for Israeli attacks against Iran, a Member State, in early June.
But the recent designant between India and China after five years of border frictions, as well as a renewed tariff pressure on New Delhi of the Trump administration, are promoting expectations for a positive meeting between XI and Modi outside the summit.
“It’s likely [New Delhi] His pride will be swallowed and put this year’s SCO problems in an attempt to maintain the impulse in China, which is a key priority of Modi at this time, “said Olander.
Analysts expect both parties to announce more incremental border measures, such as troops withdrawals, the flexibility of commercial and visa restrictions, cooperation in new fields, including climate and the widest commitment of the government and people.
Despite the lack of expected substantive policies ads at the summit, experts warn that the appeal of the block to the countries of the Global South should not be underestimated.
“This summit is optics, a really powerful optics,” Olander added.
Modi is expected to leave China after the summit, while Putin will remain in a military parade of two two of World War II in Beijing later in the week for an unusually long spell outside Russia.
