SCO brings China, India new opportunity
Summitry was at the heart of geopolitics in the past week or so.
While the G7 meeting in Canada ended on an acrimonious note, placing US President Donald Trump at odds with the rest of the leaders of the grouping and prompted some Western observers to call the outcome a “G6 plus one”, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in China came out looking quite different. On Tuesday, when world media attention was focused on the historic meeting between Trump and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, former NBA star Dennis Rodman who was also in the city state, cried on live television recalling his efforts to get the US to sit with the DPRK.
In the coming days, we will likely get a clearer idea of how denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will progress, but in the meanwhile, let’s talk more about the SCO.
Aside from the firework displays and a banquet hosted by President Xi Jinping for SCO leaders on the waterfront of Qingdao, a coastal city in East China’s Shandong province where the summit was held at the weekend, analysts have commented on the bloc’s increased relevance with India and Pakistan participating as full-time members.
At the end of the summit, the Qingdao Declaration put forward by the member states included opposition to trade protectionism and the use of chemical weapons, enhancing environmental protection in the eight countries, pushing for the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal and supporting peace in Afghanistan.
Both Iran and Afghanistan have observer status in the SCO.
Ahead of the Qingdao summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin described China, India and Russia as major players in an interview to China Media Group.
Although the SCO is a multilateral platform, it does provide China and India with another opportunity for engagement.
Xi, according to Indian media, has accepted an invitation for an informal summit in India next year, fashioned after a similar meeting in Wuhan, Hubei province, in late April, when the two leaders spoke one on one (with translators) over many hours. The meeting’s date has yet to be announced.
Modi faces a general election in India in 2019.
During a meeting between Xi and Modi in Qingdao, they also touched upon how the two countries could work together in Afghanistan. “A project in the area of capacity building” would be identified for this joint exercise, Indian media quoted Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale as saying.
The details of such a project are not publicly known.
“Most of the SCO members have stakes in Afghanistan’s security, and political and economic stability,” B. R. Deepak, a professor of Chinese and Southeast Asian studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told China Daily earlier this month.
Afghanistan, with which India has a long relationship, has welcomed the Sino-Indian venture.
As China and India seek to play larger roles in international affairs, one cannot rule out the possibility of more such joint projects in third countries.