China in global groupings (SCO, BRICS)
China's role in the SCO and BRICS: founding, expansion, institutions, and Beijing's strategy of building non-Western multilateral order.
From Shanghai Five to the SCO
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) traces directly to the Shanghai Five mechanism founded on 26 April 1996, when China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan signed the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions. The same five plus Uzbekistan formally established the SCO in Shanghai on 15 June 2001, adopting the SCO Charter at the St Petersburg summit on 7 June 2002. The Charter codifies the "Shanghai Spirit"—mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for civilisational diversity and pursuit of common development.
For Beijing the SCO served two original purposes: settling Soviet-successor border disputes (the 1996 and 1997 confidence-building treaties), and combating the "three evils" (terrorism, separatism, extremism)—a formula codified in the 2001 Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, which targeted concerns over Xinjiang and the East Turkestan movement. The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), headquartered in Tashkent, became the SCO's principal security organ.
Institutions and expansion
The SCO Secretariat sits in Beijing, signalling China's centrality. The supreme body is the Council of Heads of State; below it sit the Council of Heads of Government and sectoral councils. Decisions are taken by consensus, which constrains any single member but also protects China's preference against binding majority votes.
The organisation expanded decisively: India and Pakistan acceded as full members at the Astana summit on 9 June 2017, Iran joined at the 2023 summit (formalised July 2023), and Belarus became a full member at the Astana summit on 4 July 2024. The grouping thus spans roughly 40% of the world's population and a quarter of global GDP. China promotes economic add-ons—the SCO Interbank Consortium (2005) and the SCO Business Council—and has long pushed for an SCO Development Bank, resisted by Russia and India wary of Chinese financial dominance.
The SCO is not a military alliance: it has no Article-5 collective-defence clause and is best read as a security-flavoured consultative bloc. Its 'Peace Mission' joint counter-terror exercises (held since 2007) build interoperability without alliance commitments. For China, the SCO secures its western periphery, legitimises its Xinjiang security narrative, and projects an image of Eurasian leadership independent of US-led structures—aligning with the Global Security Initiative Xi Jinping announced in April 2022.
