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Niklas Swanström
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization recently celebrated its 5th anniversary in Shanghai and it is maturing quickly, seemingly with the emerging aim of becoming the dominant organization in the region. This development has sparked heated discussions over the success of SCO, its functionality, not to mention its future orientation. China has especially been singled out as an actor that has sought to use the SCO as a means to advance its interests in the region. Its role in Central Asia has even been debated within the SCO and China has at times been, more or less openly, accused to aspire to dominate the region. However, its intention is mitigated by many factors, such as the lack of financial resources, difficulties in implementing economic cooperation agreements signed among member states and most importantly, its fellow SCO partner, Russia (...)
Alan Rousso
Resource rich countries around the world have been reaping the rewards of a commodity boom that has lasted more than eight years and shows no sign of slowing in the near future. Growth, particularly in energy producing countries in Eurasia, has given governments there newfound confidence in how they conduct their domestic and international affairs. Partly through effective macroeconomic management and the creation of stabilization funds, governments in the energy rich countries have thus far seemed to inoculate themselves against the “Dutch disease” – the reduction in competitiveness of manufactured and other tradable goods that comes with increases in the real exchange rate, which in turn undermines growth. So, have the energy exporters in Eurasia – principally Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – finally cured themselves of the “resource curse”? (...)
Chin-Hao Huang
Two months ago, the sixth summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) returned to Shanghai, where the organization was first founded, for its fifth anniversary with much pomp and circumstance. Chinese President Hu Jintao rolled out the red carpet welcoming heads of state from the organization’s members. Throughout the two-day summit, they were joined by leaders from neighboring countries sitting in as observers and by senior representatives from Southeast and Central Asian multilateral institutions. The Chinese hosts did a praiseworthy job of ensuring a seat for each and every regional actor at the working table. All were present but one: the United States (...)
India’s Attitude towards China’s Growing Influence in Central Asia
Gulshan Sachdeva
The strategic location, energy resources, competition for pipeline routes and the sheer number of regional and global players, were sufficient reasons for many analysts to create theories of the “New Great Game” in Central Asia. The race for military bases and the regime change experiments through “color revolutions” have added a new dimension to this competition. Earlier, analysts felt the real competition was between Russia and the U.S. However as of late, China has created a huge profile for itself through trade, energy deals, military agreements and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Yet, very few in India have directly looked at the implications of the growing Chinese influence on Indian security, energy deals and commerce. This article attempts to fill this gap (...)
HIV/AIDS in Xinjiang: A Growing Regional Challenge
Bates Gill & Song Gang
Jutting into Central Asia and bordering on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, and on the disputed Jammu and Kashmir and Aksai Chin regions, Xinjiang presents Beijing with an array of opportunities and challenges. The region is rich in tapped and untapped natural resources and makes up nearly a sixth of China’s landmass. It provides Beijing with a significant strategic foothold in the heart of the Eurasian landmass and a claim to exert its national interests in this increasingly important part of the world (...)
After the G-8 Summit: China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Ariel Cohen
Russia and China embraced a new friend at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in June – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian leader was the only representative from a non-member state (Iran is an SCO observer) invited to deliver a major address, and, true to form, his anti-U.S. rhetoric rang loud and clear. According to Ahmadinejad, the Shanghai Axis should “block threats and unlawful strong-arm interference” – from Washington (...)
Escaping Russia, Looking to China: Turkmenistan Pins Hopes on China’s Thirst for Natural Gas
Kathleen J. Hancock
Nearly 15 years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the former superpower’s place stand Russia and 14 other new states. Each of the smaller states has had to decide whether it will rejoin Russia in an economically integrated neo-empire, as Russia has been pursuing, or whether it will shrug off the former imperial center. Turkmenistan’s dictator-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov has pursued a Russia-resistant policy. Dependent on Russian-owned natural gas pipelines to export its single vast resource, the state has long looked for alternative routes to international markets (...)
Securing the Maritime Silk Route: Is there a Sino-Indian Confluence?
Gurpreet Singh Khurana
The economic eminence of two fast-developing economies, China and India, is clearly on the rise. The developmental index of a state is closely linked to its reliance on sea-borne trade and its need for energy resources, and thus the increasing criticality of sea-lines for the two countries. In particular, the principal sea-route extending from the waters of the Arabian Peninsula to the western Pacific has assumed immense significance, almost akin to the historic “Silk Route”. However, this route transiting the Indian Ocean is plagued by serious insecurities due to proliferation of an array of non-traditional threats that hitherto never figured in the calculations of states. The article examines the imperatives of cooperative security for China and India and explores the possible geo-strategic convergence between them, which could be translated into a symbiotic relationship to secure their “maritime lifelines” (...)
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization at 5: Achievements and Challenges Ahead
Zhao Huasheng
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was established on June 15, 2001 and recently celebrated its fifth year anniversary. While the SCO has made great progress on a number of important issues over the past five years, there are many questions which have yet to be addressed. This article provides an assessment of the major achievements of the SCO, as well as the problems it faces. It will then discuss the developmental prospects of the organization (...)
