Chicago – September 01, 2025
Leaders from Russia, China, India, and seven other countries gathered in northern China on Monday for the latest annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). This meeting may signal the growing influence of the SCO as it challenges America’s global leadership.
The SCO, a group of 10 countries, met in the port city of Tianjin. Since it was founded 24 years ago, the SCO has become more influential, even though its goals and plans remain unclear to many people. The members of the group include Belarus, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The organization started out as a way to reduce U.S. influence in Central Asia. Over the years, it has expanded to include India and Pakistan in 2017, Iran in 2023, and Belarus in 2024.
Some members of the SCO, like Iran and Belarus, are known to be strong opponents of the U.S. Other countries, including India, China, and Russia, have more complicated relationships with the U.S., due to things like the war in Ukraine and trade tensions.
Since its founding in 2001, China has been the main power in the SCO, using the group to strengthen its economic and political influence. Russia has also used the organization to try to maintain control over former Soviet republics in Central Asia like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Belarus, Iran, Pakistan, and India joined the SCO later, hoping to gain some of its growing influence. But some experts question how valuable their membership truly is. Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, says the SCO is one of China’s most important regional partnerships.
