The Council of Heads of State (CHS) is the highest decision-making body of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), established under the SCO Charter signed at St. Petersburg on 7 June 2002 (entered into force 19 September 2003). Article 5 of the Charter lists it first among SCO organs, and Article 6 vests it with authority to determine priorities, define principal directions of activity, decide fundamental questions of internal arrangement and functioning, and address cooperation with other states and international organisations. The CHS convenes once a year in regular session, with the chairmanship rotating annually by alphabetical order of member states; the chairing state hosts the summit and steers the organisation's agenda for that year. Decisions in all SCO organs, including the CHS, are taken by consensus rather than majority vote, reflecting the bloc's emphasis on sovereign equality.
In operational terms, the CHS sits atop a layered institutional architecture beneath which function the Council of Heads of Government (prime ministers, handling economic and budgetary matters), the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, councils of national coordinators, and two permanent bodies — the Secretariat in Beijing and the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) Executive Committee in Tashkent. The CHS appoints the SCO Secretary-General and the Director of the RATS Executive Committee on the recommendation of subordinate councils. Its annual summits typically issue a political declaration and a slate of cooperation documents covering the "three evils" of terrorism, separatism and extremism, plus trade, connectivity and security coordination. The "Shanghai Spirit" — mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for civilisational diversity and pursuit of common development — is the declared normative basis the CHS reaffirms at each session.
The SCO grew from the "Shanghai Five" (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) founded in 1996, becoming the SCO with Uzbekistan's accession in 2001. The CHS admitted India and Pakistan as full members at the Astana summit (2017), Iran at the 2023 summit (signed at the Qingdao/SCO process and formalised), and Belarus as a full member in 2024, bringing membership to ten states. Notable sessions include the 2018 Qingdao summit hosted by China, the 2022 Samarkand summit, and the 2024 Astana summit. The chairmanship and hosting role give the host considerable agenda-setting weight, which China and Russia have used to project a non-Western multilateral order.
For the civil-services and China-foreign-policy examinations, the Council of Heads of State is tested in International Relations and Current Affairs sections. Typical question angles ask candidates to identify the SCO's supreme organ, distinguish the CHS (presidents) from the Council of Heads of Government (prime ministers), recall the consensus decision rule, locate the Secretariat (Beijing) and RATS (Tashkent), and trace membership expansion dates — especially India's 2017 accession and India's 2023 SCO chairmanship hosting a virtual summit. Examiners frequently pair the CHS with the "Shanghai Spirit" and the "three evils" doctrine, and probe its significance for India's strategic balancing between SCO and Western groupings such as the Quad.
Example
At the SCO Council of Heads of State summit in Astana on 4 July 2024, the assembled presidents admitted Belarus as the bloc's tenth full member and adopted the Astana Declaration reaffirming the Shanghai Spirit.
Frequently asked questions
It is the supreme decision-making body of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), composed of member-state presidents. Under Article 6 of the 2002 SCO Charter it sets priorities, decides fundamental questions and approves cooperation with external partners, meeting in regular annual session.