Unleashing prosperity: How the SCO is shaping a new economic landscape
BEIJING- Editor’s note: At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)’s Astana Summit in July 2024, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for building a common home featuring solidarity and mutual trust, peace and tranquility, prosperity and development, good-neighborliness and friendship, as well as fairness and justice. To highlight this vision, CGTN has launched the five-part series Common Home, Moving Forward. The third article in this series focuses on economic interconnections.
When the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was founded in 2001, its primary goal was enhancing regional security and stability. Over time its mission expanded to include economic cooperation, recognizing that common development is intrinsically linked to sustainable prosperity and stability.
Today, the SCO is the largest regional organization by geography and population, endowed with a vast market, diverse resources and growth potential. One of its primary objectives now is to facilitate trade and investment among member states, and initiatives such as the SCO Business Council and the Interbank Consortium have been established to promote cross-border commerce and financial cooperation.
The trade volume between China and other member states, observer states and dialogue partners of the SCO reached a record high of $890 billion in 2024. It accounted for 14.4 percent of China’s total export and import, demonstrating the vitality and prospects of intra-regional trade.
SCO cooperation has also boosted infrastructure connectivity across Eurasia. Flagship transport networks such as the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor and the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway have significantly reduced trade barriers.
Enhanced energy infrastructure such as the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline and Eastern Russia-China Natural Gas Pipeline ensures the region’s energy security and stabilizes global energy markets. SCO member states recently signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly construct “Silk Road Stations” to address critical infrastructure gaps along rapidly expanding trade corridors.
In addition, the SCO has facilitated alignment of development strategies. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China aligns closely with the development strategies of other SCO member states, including Kazakhstan’s Bright Road Initiative, the National Development Program of Kyrgyzstan, and the National Development Strategy of Tajikistan.
Sustainable development has become a new priority of the SCO, with green and digital development as the focus areas.
Over the years, SCO members have made remarkable progress in green development. According to a report released during the SCO Energy Ministers Meeting this June, SCO countries had a total renewable energy installed capacity of 2.31 billion kW as of the end of 2024, accounting for about half of the global total. The SCO Green Development Forum is a platform for members to discuss areas of development as green development partners, and further align with the organization’s Green Development Agenda.
Digital development is another growing area for the SCO. Initiatives like the SCO Digital Economy Forum and the Digital Silk Road play a crucial role in linking Eurasian digital economies. Cross-border e-commerce between China and other SCO member states grew by 34 percent in 2024 over the previous year.
SCO members are also pushing for digital transition of the group. The Action Plan for the Digital Transformation of SCO Member States adopted in June, for instance, encourages further collaboration in e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and smart infrastructure.
But despite the progress, the SCO still faces hurdles to greater economic integration. Externally, the group is under close scrutiny and sustained pressure from the West, which seeks to play divide and rule. Internally, cooperation within the group faces problems due to the members’ diverse development stages, economic models, cultural traditions and even geopolitical disputes.
To better cope with these challenges, the SCO can strengthen institutional mechanisms to enhance connectivity in five priority areas: policy, infrastructure, trade, finance, and people-to-people ties. That will better align competitive advantages and foster mutual understanding and mutual trust.
The upcoming SCO summit in Tianjin, which China will host as the SCO’s rotating president, is expected to further unleash the huge potential of the group. Since the SCO has the goal of building a common home featuring prosperity and development, the members have common ground to oppose protectionist tariffs, unilateral sanctions and technological restrictions, while deepening economic cooperation to enhance the well-being of people in the region.
More importantly, the SCO being a pioneer regional organization of the Global South, its common development model offers an alternative to the Western exclusive clubs. It proves that multilateralism, when properly structured, can deliver tangible development outcomes for all participants.
Yuan Sha, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is deputy director at the Department for Global Governance and International Organization Studies under the China Institute of International Studies.
Source: China Global Television Network (CGTN)