BEIJING, July 26 (TNS): With India and Pakistan as newly inducted members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, China is likely to face an increasing amount of divisiveness within a regional economic and security organization accustomed to extreme comity and cooperative discussions.
According to a Defence Aviation Post’s report, India’s entry could especially frustrate Beijing because of rising geopolitical competition between the Asian giants and different approaches to counter-terrorism.
Beijing may not have even wanted India to join the SCO. Russia first proposed India as a member, likely in part to complement bilateral economic and security engagement, but mainly to constrain China’s growing influence in the organization.
Russia is increasingly concerned that post-Soviet SCO members — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — are drifting too far into China’s geostrategic orbit.
For example, it is well known that Moscow has long delayed implementing Chinese initiatives that would enable Beijing to reap greater benefits from regional trade, including establishing an SCO regional trade agreement and bank.
India’s entry into the SCO, could put Beijing in the awkward position of highlighting the organization’s value, while increasingly working around or outside of it. Outright failure of the SCO would be unacceptable for China because of its central role in establishing the forum.
Regardless of the bickering between countries that may break out, Beijing can be expected to make yet another show of the importance of the SCO, with all of the usual pomp and circumstance, at the next summit in June 2018.
