Belarus’ admission to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) shows that the once purely regional grouping – originally encompassing China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – is steadily expanding its geographic and geopolitical reach. After India and Pakistan in 2017 and Iran in 2023, Belarus is the first exclusively European country to join. What began as a purely Central Asian forum focused on regional security cooperation will have become an increasingly diverse 10-member club with broadening global ambitions.
China and Russia’s Changing Interests in the SCO
The SCO’s shifting focus aligns most obviously with China and Russia’s evolving interests in the organization. As founding members, they were the driving forces in creating a platform for increased regional security and economic cooperation, and 23 years later they are willing to sacrifice that role to increase the SCO’s international weight. The group’s members comprise roughly 25 percent of the world’s economic output and half of its population, making it an ever more tempting tool for Moscow and Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions.
While Russia’s interest in the Chinese-initiated organization was initially lukewarm, Moscow began to take the SCO more seriously following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and ensuing Western sanctions. Since starting its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has had to seek partners outside of Europe even more intensively. The Kremlin now sees the SCO as a useful forum for gathering support and countering Western claims of its international isolation, and as a result has adopted a “the more, the merrier” approach to membership.
China initially pushed for closer economic ties alongside security, cultural and “humanitarian” collaboration among the members of the SCO. But proposals such as a free-trade area and an SCO development bank were rejected by Russia and other members. By the mid-2010s, Beijing was using settings like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-Central Asia summit to promote closer economic cooperation with its neighbors in the region. As recently as May this year, China announced a separate mechanism for China-Central Asia emergency management cooperation, despite this task falling directly into the SCO’s purview.
In parallel, since the 2010s, China has consolidated its position as a major power in the international system, giving the SCO a symbolic value that far outweighs its practical effectiveness. Beijing uses the forum to showcase its ability to offer alternatives to existing U.S.-led institutions and to present itself as the champion of the Global South. These two goals make enlargement of the organization to include more countries beyond Central Asia nothing but beneficial – even if this means further undermining the SCO’s regional effectiveness.