Samarkand 2022 — the ‘China Dream’ of SCO Summits
Samarkand 2022 — the ‘China Dream’ of SCO Summits
WRITTEN BY GIULIA SCIORATI
12 October 2022
One of the few aspects observers seem to agree on concerning China’s current foreign policy is its increased proactiveness (or assertiveness, depending on the viewpoint) in specific world regions. Since the Russo-Ukrainian war started last February, experts have widely debated the question of whether China’s ‘activism’ would become more prominent in what has traditionally been Russia’s sphere of influence. As mere speculations do not do any good to developing our understanding of the country’s international behaviour, evidence from the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) presents a valid starting point to illustrate the state of China’s clout in its neighbourhood vis-à-vis Russia.
Indeed, on 15 and 16 September 2022, Uzbekistan’s cultural capital of Samarkand — the “pearl on the Silk Road” — played host to the annual heads of state summit of the 20-something-year-old regional cooperative framework gathering a growing number of Eurasian countries. Against an at least discursively bloc-based international system, news from this year’s SCO summit has resonated globally, primarily as the event also included the most prominent leaders of the non-Western world.
Most ‘SCO watchers’ would agree to identify the declarations published after SCO summits as the most tangible evidence of the organisation’s annual work and future priorities. The Samarkand Declaration reiterated the standard themes of previous declarations, from ad hoc conceptualisations of multilateralism and principles of international relations to lists of economic and security cooperation successes. Nonetheless, this year’s entire summit and its declaration have appeared more China-oriented than usual, arguing for China’s mounting influence in the region to the detriment of Russia.
One of the most Sinocentric SCO summits
First, the text of the declaration includes several references to China’s domestic political discourse — an aspect that, per se, can also be detected in other SCO declarations but is pervasive this year. Not only traditional principles of China’s foreign policy (for example, non-interference in the domestic affairs of SCO members or respect for national sovereignty) but also newer concepts appear in the text. A prominent example is the domain of cooperation in environmental protection, which includes Chinese President Xi Jinping’s idea of a ‘harmonious coexistence of man and nature’.
Second, Chinese diplomats took centre stage in several SCO-related diplomatic activities. Indeed, the bilateral and trilateral meetings typically preceding SCO summits are fundamental aspects of SCO members’ cooperation. China — a country known for pursuing multilateralism via developing a network of bilateral relations — particularly cherishes these frameworks, as reflected by their prominence in Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s closing media brief on the summit.
As the SCO opens to other Asian sub-regions and even the African continent, Central Asia risks losing its centrality and becoming a minor geographical area compared to the Gulf or Southeast Asia, where the national interests of SCO member states (and China, above all) are prominent.
Except for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Xi met with all the representatives of SCO member states and several observer states and dialogue partners during his 72 hours in Central Asia. India’s absence on the Chinese President’s agenda, though, has little to do with the SCO. The two leaders have still not met bilaterally since the 2020 clashes on their contested border: such a meeting will require more time, effort, and planning than a crammed SCO diplomatic agenda. With media extensively prioritising Xi’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the vast number of agreements China reached with SCO member states have remained overlooked. Still, these arrangements represent Xi’s major success in his first foreign trip since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Particular emphasis needs to be placed on the comprehensive China-Kazakhstan joint statement. In the document, the two countries agree to strengthen economic cooperation in several sectors — above all, transportation infrastructure and power station construction — while committing to stepping up efforts for high-profile energy projects (i.e. the China-Kazakhstan gas and oil pipelines) crucial to support China’s energy security needs. Furthermore, China and Uzbekistan finalised agreements for what observers estimate to be USD 1.5 billion in trade, investment, financial, and technical cooperation and announced the two countries’ willingness to create free trade industrial zones. These complementary bilateral agreements should not be underestimated as they contribute to raising China’s profile vis-à-vis other regional players and further entwine the largest Central Asian economies with China’s.
In Samarkand, Russia’s regional clout experienced the effects of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Among Central Asian members, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov made Putin wait before joining him for bilateral talks — a habit customary to the Russian President that he now experienced himself as the side-in-waiting. Yet, Russia’s proposal to host a complex of SCO sports competitions — the central point raised by the country at the summit — remains the most striking evidence of Russia’s low profile in Samarkand. Compared to China, the country’s proposal, in fact, appears relatively minor.
China’s imprint on the SCO expansion beyond Central Asia
Of course, the Samarkand summit should not be reduced to its complementary bilateral meetings. The SCO enlargement is the most evident result of the organisation’s multilateral work in Uzbekistan. Indeed, the 2021 process to grant Iran full membership has led to the signing of a memorandum — the text of which has not been made public yet — that, de facto, takes the country one step closer to the organisation’s core. Belarus has also started a similar process, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have obtained the status of dialogue partners. Bahrain, the Maldives, Kuwait, the UAE, and Myanmar have signed memoranda with the SCO to acquire the same status.
In terms of membership, therefore, the Samarkand summit has been “the largest round of expansion for the SCO”. Iran’s long and tortuous process of accession, though, seems to be at least partly a product of Xi’s call for “an active yet prudent” (emphasis added) expansion — a sign that the organisation is not oblivious to the domestic and international situation of future member states.
The SCO’s expansion around Eurasia, moreover, and the participation of more and more countries from the Gulf, South and Southeast Asia and North Africa risk diluting the geographical core of the organisation: Central Asia. The Samarkand declaration rhetorically addresses this issue by reaffirming early in the text that “the Member States consider Central Asia to be the core of the SCO”. However, rhetoric will translate into actions only when Central Asia assumes a more prominent position in institutional decisions, which become increasingly problematic because of the growing number of greater powers entering the organisation.
As the SCO opens to other Asian sub-regions and even the African continent, Central Asia risks losing its centrality and becoming a minor geographical area compared to the Gulf or Southeast Asia, where the national interests of SCO member states (and China, above all) are prominent. For now, Central Asian countries are still relatively comfortable in their position in the organisation. Yet, different geographical focuses point to different challenges, and Central Asia might not always be a top priority. At the same time, as China gains more centrality in the SCO, the organisation’s further expansion could become an asset for the country to consolidate its position beyond the neighbourhood.
A China-theorised SCO security outlook of sub-regions
As the SCO expanded its geographical scope away from China and Russia’s joint neighbourhood, and Russia’s clout emerged as damaged from the Samarkand summit, this year’s meeting could also be labelled as the ‘China Dream’ of SCO summits. Whether this tendency will translate into an even more prominent role for China in the organisation, though, remains to be seen, especially when the security domain is contemplated.
Indeed, structural and domestic constraints prevent China from assuming a securitising role similar to the one taken up by Russia in the region in the last twenty years. The Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) ‘peacekeepers’ deployed in Kazakhstan last January are the latest example of this long trend. At the systemic level, if put on the ground, China’s military capabilities may exacerbate the international community’s perception — especially on the part of the United States — that the country poses an even more significant threat to the status quo. At the state level, conversely, Beijing is bound by the rhetoric of peaceful rise and non-interference in the internal affairs of its partners that limit its ability to operate freely in the security domain.
Although the Russo-Ukrainian war has strained Moscow’s relations with Central Asia and the entire post-Soviet space, China has traditionally been reticent in raising its position as a securitising agent internationally, and this approach will be hard to change. Throughout the years, China has, in fact, advocated more centrality for regional actors in security maintenance. In the future, this notion could be formally integrated into the SCO framework, solving China’s security-agent conundrum. If this proposition were implemented, Central Asia could be one of the primary beneficiaries. The region would consolidate its position in this new geographically wandering organisation, thanks to a sub-regionally specialised institutional outlook where sub-regions have no reason to compete with one another.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Giulia Sciorati is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Trento and an associate research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies. She researches China’s foreign and security policy with a geographical focus on Central Asia and an interest in discursive constructions of memory and heritage in diplomacy. Image credit: Flickr/MEAphotogallery.