The Tianjin Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), will go down in history as a watershed moment in global politics. It heralded a moment which expressly demonstrated that the western world no longer held imminence and power was shifting to the east. Though the SCO is a bloc that is still evolving, has the potential to reshape the global balance of power and this was most soundly manifested at Tianjin. And that is why, though at the core of this summit’s historicity and significance lies Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tianjin, after seven long years, and participation in the summit amidst the backdrop of worsening Indo-US ties, the organization is more than that.

Beginning as what was billed as Eurasia’s response to the NATO, the SCO is no longer a symbolic regional alliance. Currently it represents nearly 40% of the world’s population and close to 30% of global GDP. Its ten full members — China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus. There are 16 more partner states.

The SCO, as the name suggests, was formed in Shanghai in 2001, on the initiative of China and the Russian Federation, along with the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. It was meant to be a regional security bloc, for countries in the region coordinating and pooling resources to jointly battle terrorism, and transnational crimes like narcotics smuggling, human trafficking, and religious radicalism. The immediate reason was instability in Afghanistan which affected all these countries. The main reason, however, was to check Chinese expansion in Central Asia where five sovereign states appeared in the post-Soviet space, in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. The SCO was a means to delineate the spheres of influence in Central Asia – while China could economically, Russia would retain control over defense and security in the region which it continues through the Collective Security Treaty........

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