Forging a New Security Order in Eurasia: China, the SCO, and the Impacts on Regional Governance

Abstract

Beijing played a critical role in establishing the SCO in the aftermath of the break of the former Soviet Union in response to the emerging non-traditional security challenges. Overtime, the SCO has evolved into a regional institution critical to China’s growing interests in Central Asia/Eurasia and increasingly, Beijing seeks to influence and shape the organization in support of its institutional balancing strategy—inclusive in soliciting Russian endorsement of its diplomatic agendas in the region ranging from energy security and greater economic integration, and exclusive in resisting and preventing US influence in the region. Lately, that strategy has also been displayed in the SCO membership expansion to India to minimize chance of a Washington–Delhi axis against China, at least not where SCO-wide (that would include China) interests are concerned. But the most critical transformation of the SCO as a regional institution is its utility in Beijing’s exclusive institutional balancing strategy against the US, to prevent the latter from gaining access and influence in Central Asia/Eurasia; to foster trust among member states, and develop the SCO into a regional security community, and to safeguard Chinese interests in both geo-economic (trade and energy) and geopolitical (security and regional stability) terms.