China's Grand Global Plan On Full Display At SCO Summit

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Indeed, both India and Pakistan are SCO members, even as tensions abound among Central and West Asian members of the group. Notably, this model of modern statecraft relies on performance, rather than substantive norms and policy commitments, as the currency of influence.

When Indian leader Narendra Modi sat alongside Pakistani leaders despite their militarized borders, when Iran attended despite crushing Western sanctions, and when Turkey balanced NATO membership with SCO partnership, these performative acts validated something more valuable than any treaty signature - China's role as a rising convener of Eurasian politics.

In truth, the SCO operates on principles that would make Western diplomats recoil: no enforcement, minimal obligations and irresolvable contradictions. Yet this apparent weakness conceals a useful strength that escapes conventional analysis, enabling Beijing to signal nominal and symbolic victories without committing to substantive policy breakthroughs.

Precisely because the SCO is so divided, the optimal strategy for asserting authority is to avoid specific policy debates that could deepen fragmentation and instead play up the discursive and emotive commonalities among its members – notably, a shared skepticism toward the incumbent US leadership and its proclaimed vision of the world order.

This inversion of Western institutional logic explains why what looks hollow from Brussels or Washington endures in Eurasia. Western observers see failure in the lack of enforcement, but the absence of obligations is precisely what sustains the forum. By design, the SCO absorbs contradictions and hosts adversaries without requiring consensus.

Its communications are filled with amicable yet non-contentious statements that offer representatives plausible deniability – which partly explains why Pakistan found it conducive and politically possible to sign onto a declaration that implicitly criticizes the role played by radical Islamist terrorists in regional geopolitics, an olive branch of sorts to India over the recent Indo-Pakistani clashes.

The implications reach well beyond South and Central Asia. If China can convene adversaries, absorb contradictions and project authority through institutional design rather than military coercion or economic conditionality, it may well be devising a template that other multilateral institutions could replicate.

The SCO thus demonstrates a certain constructivist streak in China's approach: through ritual, repetition and the circulation of its diplomatic language, Beijing normalizes its symbolic leadership across multilateral frameworks.

The ascending power is slowly coming to terms with the imperative and case for soft power, to be acquired via the dexterous leveraging of existing and new multilateral institutions.

Where the SCO falls short

Yet this is also where the SCO falls short. Where the G7 demands coordination and NATO insists on collective defense, the SCO is rooted in avowed ambiguities and the accommodation of inconsistencies and conflicts. Indeed, its path forward is defined by several clear challenges.

The first is the danger of mission creep. What began as a loose security dialogue now includes coordination centers, development banks and governance initiatives. Beijing rejects“bloc politics” even as it builds bloc-like structures.

Some may praise the expansion in scope as artful maneuvering, yet aligning and harmonizing the interests of its diverse member states remains far easier said than done.

Can the SCO get India and Pakistan on the same page on which projects should be externally financed? How will Central and West Asian states seek to compete with one another for governance-related funding? To what extent will Russia seek to subtly co-opt SCO coordination centers to maintain its waning influence in Central Asia? These are questions no single power can answer unilaterally.

The second concerns long-standing mistrust and skepticism. China, India and Russia appear to be drawing closer (as reflected by their leaders' cordial interactions at Tianjin and a flurry of sherpa-led talks beforehand), yet their engagement begins from a low baseline.